Subscribe
What's New
Tag

Story of the Week

Browsing
In VDI

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Platform: A Crucial Enabler of Hybrid Workplaces

By 10 Mins Read

Over the years, overall IT infrastructure across organizations has transformed, and the recent global health event has only spurred the trend. The era of working in office cubicles – via company-issued systems – is fading away. Now, the near omnipresence of digital technologies and the availability of newer, more portable devices enable work from almost any location.

However, deploying and maintaining all end-user devices at scale while catering to the fast-changing workforce needs is challenging. So, to be resilient, agile, and efficient in this context, businesses are gravitating toward virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to encourage remote data access to their workforces.

This article briefly discusses Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) in general, its working, types, and benefits.

What is Windows Virtual Desktop?

Windows Virtual Desktop is a cloud-based app and desktop virtualization platform from Microsoft that offers a native Windows 10/11 experience on demand. While each virtual desktop mimics real standalone computers, the processing/computing occurs on the central server. Besides, all these are managed centrally by an organization’s dedicated IT staff or outsourced to a cloud service provider.

Now rebranded as Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), WVD enables a company’s employees to access their business resources quickly and securely from anywhere and any device – PC, tablet, or smartphone. As such, organizations no longer need to provide their workforces with physical machines, let alone manage, repair, and maintain them.

How Do Azure VDI Platforms Work?

VDI platforms such as Azure Virtual Desktops work using a hypervisor, a software that creates, runs, and manages virtual machines (VM) on enterprise system servers. Also known as virtual machine monitors (VMM), hypervisors categorize servers into pools of identical VMs that further host virtual desktop operating systems (OS). Each such virtual desktop contains an instant of the OS. Further, the IT administrators supervise these VMs using centralized management software and configure them for specific tasks and functions.

Employees can access these virtual desktops from any location or device, and all the processing happens on the host server. They can log in to their AVD instances and establish a connection via a connection broker – a software-enabled gateway that acts as an intermediary between users and VDI servers. The connection broker assigns the session to an Azure Virtual Desktop from the appropriate pool.

Types of Azure VDI Platforms

Businesses can deploy Azure virtual desktop infrastructure solutions in two environments:

Persistent VDI

Persistent VDI functions are similar to legacy systems where end-users can personalize their devices and retain their work progress and settings from the previous sessions. Thanks to the capabilities of VMs, persistent virtual desktops act like true physical systems – from a remote device. The end-users log in to the same VM every time, even if the connection is reset. This is tremendously beneficial for several educational and work settings.

Non-persistent VDI

Non-persistent VDI platforms, on the other hand, offer a slew of generic desktops that end-users connect to whenever necessary. The desktops allocated to the users start anew in each session. Hence, whatever changes users make on their desktops in their previous sessions are lost once they log out. Besides, non-persistent virtual desktops are cheaper and simpler to use as the organizations’ IT teams need not have to maintain customized desktop instances between sessions.

Non-persistent VDI is commonplace in companies brimming with multiple-task workers or employees performing a limited set of repetitive tasks. Case in point, call centers, computer labs, public libraries, and retail kiosks. In these environments, neither users require personalization nor want their personal data to be stored.

Benefits of Azure VDI Platforms

With the worldwide shifts in work patterns, more organizations are turning to AVD. Following are some of the benefits of leveraging VDI platforms, especially in a hybrid workplace environment:

Long-term Cost-savings

As computing is done on servers, Azure virtual desktop infrastructure helps scale down hardware, maintenance, and software licensing expenses significantly. Employees can access their virtual desktops from traditional devices, thin clients, or even tablets, thus avoiding purchasing new (and expensive) hardware.

Also, end clients can cut down on infrastructure costs by right-sizing VMs and optimize their usage with Windows 11 and Windows 10 multi-session. Companies with heavy and highly unpredictable workloads can opt for pay-as-you-go billing.

Remote Accessibility

Azure VDI users can log in to their virtual desktops from any endpoint. In addition, they can utilize any web-browsing device – smartphones, tablets, and computers – to access the same application and data. Therefore, setting up hybrid workplaces for new joinees becomes unbelievably easy with AVD, particularly if they are working remotely.

Besides, integration with FSLogix Profile Containers helps end-users switch comfortably between VMs. The multi-session capability of AVD enables employees to experience the feature-rich capabilities of Windows 10/11 and assemble numerous users on a single system.

High-level Security

In Azure virtual desktop infrastructure solutions, data and applications live on centralized servers instead of end-client devices. As such, businesses’ digital resources will no longer remain at stake, even if an endpoint device is compromised or stolen. Moreover, fewer workstations equate to reduced chances of cyber criminals intruding into a company’s IT fabric.

Azure VDI services boast intelligent security capabilities that proactively detect and tackle threats to keep critical assets secure and compliant. Further, they come with a reverse connect transport to create remote sessions, providing a considerably more secure mechanism.

On-the-fly Scalability

With Azure VDI platforms, companies can launch or pare back on resources based on their corporate requisites. Also, they can deploy system apps, configure settings, and adjust the number of users. This agility and flexibility help trim overall costs while ensuring that businesses always have the resources they need to operate at peak efficiency.

Apart from that, Azure VDI platforms automatically scale session hosts to balance loads to deliver a better user experience, especially during computing-heavy tasks, while optimizing session host costs.

How will hybrid work fuel the demand for VDI?

The past few months have witnessed an explosive discussion on the “future of work,” and certain critical themes have dominated such commentaries. Case in point, several companies are nodding for hybrid work cultures, thanks to COVID-19-triggered shifts. As the dust settles and people return to normalcy, hybrid work will remain highly preferred among employers and employees alike.

However, supporting hybrid work arrangements creates new speed bumps for chief information officers (CIO)s. With tablets, smartphones, and laptops underpinning most of the mission-critical operations, C-level executives are contemplating what technology proposition they should have for their workforces – both at homes and offices.

Luckily, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is the answer to that query. Desktop virtualization technology serves as the antidote to the apparent challenges organizations face while endorsing a more flexible future of work. Moreover, the much-discussed pros of VDI are ringing in the ears of CIOs when pandemic-induced lockdowns have pushed enterprises into the remote working arena.

Having an entire virtual desktop – single and/or shared – housing corporate workflows and assets accessible anywhere, anytime, and from any device makes more sense. This is especially true when VDI simultaneously ticks the boxes of performance, mobility, security, and cost-efficiency.

Going forward, even as the remote working fad wanes, companies will promote hybrid work settings. In addition, initiatives, including scaling down office footprints and implementing hot desking, could become par for the course. Virtual desktop infrastructure solutions truly shine when it comes to managing hybrid workforces. As the work culture continues to cement its position, businesses investing in failsafe VDI to support each employee’s needs (irrespective of location) are well-placed for lucrative returns.

Conclusion

Azure virtual desktop infrastructure is a natural fit for the modern digital economy, serving various use cases across industries. Reputed for its robust scalability, security, and flexibility, the leading-edge desktop virtualization service offers umpteen benefits to organizations with relevant use cases.

Additionally, remote and hybrid workplaces have dug their heels in the labor market. As these pervasive work models gain more steam, the adoption of Azure VDI platforms will only see an uptick.

FAQs

What is the future of VDI?

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has been experiencing a demand uptick over the past few years. The new hybrid working paradigm will stimulate this trend as businesses have to facilitate their entire workforce with secure access to mission-critical resources – irrespective of device or location.

The latest technologies, such as hyperconvergence, will be of enormous importance in shaping VDI. This will empower IT teams to focus more on business-centered tasks and spend less time fretting about the infrastructure.

Virtual desktop services have matured, and so have the technology and infrastructure underpinning them. With further advances, their future will nearly mimic that of the cloud: hybrid alongside multiple deployment models serving various purposes.

What is hybrid VDI?

Hybrid VDI fuses the layered, single-image management attributes of on-site/cloud VDI with local image execution on endpoints. All this with fast planning and setup, low implementation cost, and minimal IT skills. Hybrid VDI offers the centralized management benefits of its legacy version while still delivering the best possible experience for end-users.

This layered approach to virtual desktop management tremendously streamlines administration. The IT staff manages only one golden image of applications and operating systems (OS) rather than managing tons of independent endpoints in the fleet of devices.

However, unlike VDI, end-users leverage all the local computing power of endpoints, including on-board graphics processing and high-end processors. Further, they can work even while offline.

Is VDI still relevant?

Virtual desktops have gained immense popularity and for the right reasons. They offer loads of robust features. They help businesses cut down on the total cost of ownership (TCO). They are flexible and agile. Installing software updates and patches is unbelievably easy with virtual desktop infrastructure.

That being considered, VDI’s numero-uno selling point is its ability to enable remote work culture. It allows workforces to connect to corporate networks anywhere and on any device securely. However, even though conventional work models regain momentum, forward-thinking organizations acknowledge the urgency to accommodate employees in a hybrid setting as people rethink work-life balance.

So, yes, virtual desktop services do hold relevance in the current (and future) business economy.

Why is a virtual desktop important?

More than ever, the performance of businesses rests upon data collection and sharing. They benefit from working with flexible, reliable, and highly secure computer systems. This is where virtual desktop infrastructure yields substantial business gains.

VDI empowers companies to operate fully functional virtual desktops, allowing employees to access desktops, data, and applications from any device, location, and anytime. Some of its key attractions include business mobility, device friendliness, reduced operational expenses (OPEX), and the pay-as-you-go subscription model.

Not only are virtual desktop services becoming more prevalent in corporate and home environments, but even governments are quickly realizing their benefits.

What are the benefits of virtual desktop infrastructure?

Virtual desktops offer a multitude of benefits, some of which are as follows:

  • VDI empowers businesses to quickly modify their resource usage, for instance, virtual desktops, as per their evolving needs
  • Better data security with MFA, encryption, OS patching, and access control
  • Cost savings due to reduced on-site workstations and their maintenance costs
  • Allows employees to work on their own devices (also called BYOD)
  • Centralized management helps IT professionals monitor all devices, servers, and networks in real-time and proactively respond to cyber threats.

Is a virtual desktop good for work?

Virtual desktops hold the reins on the future of workplaces. As remote and/or hybrid work climbs from “good to have” to “must have,” organizations are hunting for technologies enabling workforces to conveniently access critical resources without being in a physical workplace.

Thanks to virtual desktop services, employees can work from anywhere, be it their homes, nearby cafes, or a thousand miles away. Moreover, end-users need not worry about system version, configuration, or technical complexities. In a nutshell, employees get to enjoy the same experience as on-site desktops as long as they have a stable internet connection and a compatible device.

Keep Reading
By
In DaaS

How DaaS Solves the Challenges of Digital Workplace Transformation

By 5 Mins Read

For IT teams, giving workforces the resources they need to thrive has never been harder than it is today. The pivot toward hybrid and remote work – which more than three-quarters of businesses have embraced, according to Gallup – is only part of the reason. Pervasive cybersecurity threats and ongoing economic uncertainty have also contributed to the pressure that IT organizations face in delivering secure, cost-effective solutions that workforces can access from anywhere.

Fortunately, there’s an offering that can meet all these challenges: Desktop-as-a-Service, or DaaS. We’re excited to showcase Anunta’s fully managed DaaS offering at VMware Explore 2022, focused on supercharging the digital workforce transformations that businesses across the world are currently undergoing.

The Age of Workplace Uncertainty

To understand why DaaS has become so crucial to business success, you must understand just how radically the workplace has changed in a relatively short period of time. Several key disruptors have emerged in recent years:

  • The adoption of remote and hybrid work models, in which employees operate off-site on a routine basis.
  • A massive surge in cybersecurity attacks and risks, which have never been as prevalent as they are today.
  • Economic instability due to high inflation rates, rising borrowing costs and limited capital.

On their own, each of these trends might not lead to major upheaval for the way businesses manage their workforces. But the fact that all these disruptions are taking place at the same time has led to massive challenges for IT organizations.

Being able to provide IT services to remote and hybrid workers is hard enough. But it’s even worse when those resources need to be hardened against the ever-increasing risk of cyberattack.

At the same time, many organizations need to support remote and hybrid workforces in a resource-constrained environment, which means they must make smart financial decisions about where and how they deploy IT resources. They can’t just toss money at modern workplace challenges until they disappear, because there’s not as much money to toss around as there was before the current economic downturn.

The Role of DaaS in Workplace Transformation Success

At VMware Explore, Anunta experts will come together to showcase how Desktop-as-a-Service can help businesses meet each of the above challenges in order to achieve successful workplace transformation.

By allowing businesses to replace traditional PCs with cloud-based virtual desktops, DaaS makes it easy to build desktop infrastructure for the modern digital workplace. With DaaS, it doesn’t matter where your workers are physically located or when they choose to work. They can access cloud-based desktop sessions from anywhere, using any local device.

From a security perspective, too, DaaS not only meets, but surpasses, the security standards of traditional, in-office PCs. DaaS provides robust access controls and encryption for network traffic. It also virtually eliminates the risk that physical security breaches (such as the theft of laptops) could place business data at risk, because data always remains inside the data centers that host DaaS sessions.

As for cost, DaaS allows companies to deploy flexible desktop infrastructure for modern workforces at a low cost. The monthly cost for fully managed DaaS services is as low as $40 per user – much less than the TCO of purchasing traditional PCs and paying IT staff to manage and support them on an ongoing basis.

Plus, because DaaS platforms offer pay-as-you-go pricing, there is no need for businesses to invest precious capital in purchasing PC infrastructure upfront. They can use an OpEx model instead – an especially valuable benefit in the context of today’s economic uncertainty.

Managed and Packaged DaaS: The Easy Way to Run Cloud Desktops

You may be thinking: “DaaS sounds great, but isn’t it a lot of work to deploy and manage it? I can’t replace my traditional desktop infrastructure overnight!”

That’s a fair point. Designing, configuring, and supporting DaaS environments can be challenging. Not only does DaaS require mastery of technologies like desktop virtualization services, but you must also tailor your DaaS environment for your use cases if you want to achieve the best performance, cost, and security.

That’s why, at Anunta, we do all of this work for our customers as part of our fully managed customized DaaS and packaged DaaS offerings. We design DaaS environments based on each customer’s unique needs, then implement and manage those environments on an ongoing basis. In exchange for predictable, transparent pay-as-you-go pricing, our clients get turnkey DaaS services that keep their workforces productive and happy while minimizing the burden on IT departments.

Learn More at VMware Explore

For full details on how the workplace is changing and how managed DaaS helps businesses rise to the challenge of digital workplace transformation, come see us at VMware Explore from Aug. 29-Sept. 1 at booth #1818. Don’t forget to catch our session, “Demystifying DaaS: Easily Enable a Hybrid Workforce,” which takes the audience through the benefits of DaaS and the freedom and flexibility it provides to the digital workplace.

We hope to see you later this month in San Francisco!

Keep Reading
By
In DaaS

How DaaS Removes the Headache from Hybrid Workforce Security

By 6 Mins Read

There’s no denying it. From a security perspective, hybrid work can be a nightmare. From the physical security threats that arise when employees store sensitive data on off-site devices that could be stolen, to the risk of passing data over insecure home networks, businesses with hybrid workforces face a whole host of security challenges that simply didn’t apply when everyone worked from the office.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Desktop-as-a-Service, or DaaS, can shore up many of the security issues associated with hybrid work. By replacing traditional desktop computers with cloud-based virtual desktops, DaaS removes one of the core risks of hybrid work – insecure PCs – while simultaneously delivering benefits like higher productivity and enhanced workforce scalability.

It’s unsurprising, then, that 64 percent of IT leaders who responded to a recent Citrix survey agreed that DaaS is a “key factor” in their organizations’ approaches to securing hybrid work. The survey also found that improving security for hybrid workforces was the top business benefit that respondents associated with DaaS. Advantages like cost savings and improved business continuity were on the list, too, but they took a back seat to security.

To understand why so many IT leaders see DaaS a pillar of hybrid work security, let’s look at the major security challenges of hybrid work, and how DaaS addresses them.

Top Security Challenges of Hybrid Work

When businesses embrace hybrid work models – meaning ones in which employees work partly from the office, and partly from remote locations – they inevitably subject themselves to new types of cybersecurity risks.

The specific security challenges of hybrid work will vary depending on factors like which types of systems a business uses and where remote workers are based, but the risks generally fall into three main categories:

  • Data security: It’s harder to secure sensitive information when the information is stored on devices that are not located in the office. The risk of physical security breaches is higher. So is the risk that malware running on a remote worker’s PC could access sensitive business data stored on the PC.
  • Network security: Hybrid workforces can’t be protected with corporate firewalls in the same way that businesses secure traditional workforces. Firewalls simply don’t work when employees need to connect from anywhere and the IP addresses of remote endpoints are constantly changing. Solutions like VPNs can help by encrypting data, but as Forbes notes, they are “not a magic solution that prevents all security threats.” For example, malware running on a compromised remote PC could potentially intercept sensitive network traffic even if the PC connects to business systems over a VPN.
  • Software security: IT teams can’t efficiently enforce security controls through frameworks like Active Directory if devices aren’t constantly connected to the corporate network. As a result, hybrid workers may be able to install applications that introduce malware or other vulnerabilities to the systems they use when working remotely. Compromised applications could, in turn, access sensitive data that passes through employees’ devices.

The list of hybrid work security challenges could go on, but these points capture the essentials.

How DaaS Protects Hybrid Workforces

When businesses ditch conventional desktops and replace them with DaaS, many of the hybrid work security issues described above go out the window. The main reason why is that when employees no longer rely on insecure desktop computers to work remotely, the data, networking and software security issues associated with desktop computers cease to apply.

In a DaaS-based desktop environment, data never physically leaves the data center where virtual desktops are hosted. That means that physical security risks disappear. In addition, because DaaS separates virtual desktop sessions from the systems that employees use to log in, any malware or other vulnerabilities present on remote workers’ local devices remains isolated from the virtual desktop environments that they use for work.

Network security is much stronger under DaaS, too, because all data passing into and out of virtual desktop environments can be encrypted – even if hybrid workers aren’t connected to a VPN. Network data can also be subjected to firewall filters because virtual desktops can have fixed IP addresses, making it possible to deploy many of the same network-level security controls that would be in place on a traditional corporate network.

As for software security, modern DaaS platforms allow IT teams to establish whichever security rules they need to govern which software is allowed to run inside corporate desktop environments. Virtual desktops remain constantly connected to central software security and monitoring systems, regardless of whether employees are logged in or not, or where they connect from.

DaaS – A Pillar of Hybrid Workforce Security

To be sure, stronger end-user security is only one of the many benefits that DaaS delivers. Virtual desktops also provide business advantages like the ability to add desktop sessions quickly when new employees are hired, predictable monthly pricing and a significant reduction in the amount of time and effort required to administer desktop systems.
An added advantage that comes with DaaS is the flexibility it brings to employers and employees alike. While employees have the flexibility to work from anywhere – home or office – it gives employers the flexibility to hire employees even in locations where the organization has no physical presence. Unburdened by geographical limitations, DaaS also helps organizations in optimizing their office space. As for employee experience, with less time spent in commute and proper work-life balance, DaaS results in enhancing it, resulting in higher productivity.

Arguably, however, DaaS’s ability to secure hybrid workforces is one of the very most important reasons why businesses today should embrace cloud-based virtual desktops. In a world where nearly three-quarters of businesses in the U.S. have already pivoted to hybrid work or expect to do so, the security risks associated with hybrid workers who rely on traditional desktops are not going to go away on their own.

But they will disappear for companies that embrace DaaS, which provides a fundamentally more secure means of giving hybrid workers the desktop computing infrastructure and applications they need to be both productive and secure, no matter where they are based.

Keep Reading
By
In DaaS

Why We Love Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Digital Workplace Infrastructure and Operations Report, 2022

By 6 Mins Read

The latest Gartner report mentioning Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) is out, and we love it for two reasons.

One is that the report, titled “Hype Cycle™ for Digital Workplace Infrastructure and Operations, 2022,” identifies DaaS as one of new innovations that businesses need to thrive in the age of distributed workforces and economic uncertainty.* (We’ll also modestly point out that the report named Anunta as a “Sample Vendor for DaaS,” but that’s beside the point.) We think, DaaS is indeed critical in an age when businesses need to provide secure, scalable desktop environments to remote workers.

The second reason we love the report is that it points to several key “obstacles” to DaaS adoption – including cost, management complexity and software licensing challenges – that we believe Anunta’s DaaS offerings are uniquely suited to solve. While we agree that problems like these may present issues for the DaaS ecosystem as a whole, we are confident that we stand apart because we offer solutions to these challenges as part of our core DaaS products.

Let us explain by providing what Gartner says about DaaS and describing how Anunta stands apart in the world of cloud desktops and virtual desktop infrastructure.

Gartner’s Take on DaaS in 2022

In July 2020, Gartner estimated that DaaS will have the most significant growth that year, identifying it as the fastest-growing segment of the cloud computing ecosystem.**

We consider, the latest Gartner report to include detailed study on DaaS confirms that that growth was not a short-lived trend. The report found that DaaS “revenue grew by 68% in 2021, compared to 2020, and 98% in 2020, compared to 2019 as clients adopted DaaS to secure distributed work”. It also said that DaaS remains critical in the post-pandemic economy because it “enables business continuity and anywhere operations for home-based and hybrid home-office operations.”

In short, we believe, there’s a lot of momentum surrounding DaaS at the present moment, as well as a bright future for DaaS going forward. Businesses that have already shifted some operations to cloud-based desktops will likely be looking to expand their DaaS footprints further, while those not yet taking advantage of DaaS will be increasingly likely to do so.

Challenges to DaaS Adoption

That said, as per the report, Gartner does believe that businesses must overcome a number of obstacles in order to leverage DaaS effectively. The largest obstacles include:

  • Cost: Usually the business case turns positive only when security, business and user costs are included.
  • Organizations struggling with changes to move financial models from capex to opex.
  • GPU use cases can be extremely expensive, preventing migration of some workloads that are highly graphical.
  • Multimedia streaming, web meetings and video call performance in DaaS are not equivalent to that of a physical endpoint.
  • Performance issues that occur in DaaS because application architectures introduce network-related issues (i.e., latency and hairpinning).
  • Some DaaS solutions require complex configuration, which, although simpler than VDI, can in some cases require careful configuration and selection of appropriate storage services to ensure a performant DaaS experience.
  • Complex desktop management requirements may not be completely fulfilled by DaaS providers.
  • Microsoft license terms that prevent the installation of Microsoft 365 applications on DaaS running on Alibaba, Amazon, or Google clouds.

Even with these challenges, Gartner says, “DaaS will continue to mature and increase in adoption through 2025.”

How Anunta Solves DaaS Obstacles

We’re happy to say that the DaaS obstacles that Gartner identifies in this report are non-issues for Anunta DaaS customers.

When it comes to cost, Anunta keeps DaaS expenses low by allowing businesses to share a single virtual desktop environment among multiple users. Customers can also pick and choose from a variety of different configuration options and service add-ons, so they get exactly what they need, without paying for what they don’t. In this way, Anunta’s DaaS and virtual desktop offerings deliver highly cost-effective solutions.

From a performance standpoint, the fact that Anunta can set up and manage DaaS environments running on virtually any type of infrastructure ensures that our customers can run whichever workloads they need. Unlike some DaaS providers, we don’t restrict customers to a particular cloud or certain types of servers. Instead, we determine which workloads our clients need to run on their cloud desktops, then decide which types of infrastructure are best for hosting the desktops. This means our customers never have to compromise on performance in order to gain the convenience of DaaS.

That flexibility also allows us to overcome the licensing restrictions that apply to DaaS. Because we can set up DaaS anywhere, our customers never need to worry that they won’t be able to use certain software in their DaaS environments due to software licensing.

Finally, as for management, Anunta offers complete “day 2” DaaS support operations in addition to DaaS design and implementation. We assume full responsibility for DaaS monitoring, software patching, change management, incident troubleshooting and more. Our can focus on using their desktop infrastructure, not trying to manage its complexity.

Conclusion: Sustaining the DaaS Momentum

While we agree that the DaaS market as a whole faces challenges related to DaaS cost, performance and management, we also know from experience that all of these obstacles can be overcome. We solve them every day for our customers, and we look forward to continuing to do so as more and more businesses turn to DaaS to enable help optimize their digital workplace infrastructure.

*Gartner, “Hype Cycle for Digital Workplace Infrastructure and Operations, 2022”, Autumn Stanish, Pankil Sheth, Stuart Downes, July 21, 2022.

**Gartner Press Release, “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud Revenue to Grow 6.3% in 2020”, June 2020. This press release is more than 12 months old and the Gartner stat is mentioned does not reflect the current market position. It is only added for historical reference.

GARTNER and HYPE CYCLE are registered trademarks and service marks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Keep Reading
By
In DaaS

Azure Virtual Desktop in Different Industries: 5 Practical Use Cases

By 5 Mins Read

In today’s unpredictable business world, ensuring a cost-efficient, secure, and effective way to support remote/hybrid workforces has become the need of the hour for every organization. Fortunately, Microsoft has helped negotiate some complexities with its year-old offering = Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD). Whether letting employees work from home, managing several flex spaces pan-region, or onboarding people across continents, AVD offers businesses the same desktop experience as in the offices without using multiple apps and log-ins.

We have data that cement AVD’s credibility in today’s workplace transformation. A Forrester Consulting study (commissioned by Intel and Microsoft) finds that businesses can:

  • Trim Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) licensing and infrastructure expenses by almost a third.
  • Cut down their IT expenses for installation, maintenance, and management by 59%.
  • Boost productivity by around 22 human hours through better connectivity, security response, and staff hiring.

In this article, we will explain how AVD is making inroads into various industries.

Manufacturing Industry – AVD Helps Shrink Hardware Costs

In manufacturing, production costs consume the bulk of the budget. Higher costs translate to lesser profit margin and eventually lesser market share. Besides, the industry houses a high volume of workers, unlike typical office-based jobs. These workers barely need to turn to IT devices at the same time.

In such circumstances, AVD can help manufacturing businesses boost their profits and bottom line. The virtualization tech enables employees to log into their persistent virtual desktops from the same machine when they need to get started. This means that manufacturing firms can operate with fewer devices with AVD. This significantly caps software and hardware costs without keeping enterprises’ security posture at stake.

BFSI Industry – AVD Adds Muscle to IT Security

Banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) firms are always security-conscious, and for a valid reason, as digital intrusions into financial institutions can cost millions (or at times billions) of dollars. Worse, even a single cyber-attack weakens consumers’ trust over the long run and compels potential customers to look for other financial service companies.

Azure Virtual Desktop protects financial institutions from costly breaches by securing all confidential employee and customer data. Case in point, AVD enables IT crews to deploy PCI-DSS-approved (Payment Card Industry-Data Security Standard) devices. These virtual devices are accessible from any remote system securing data transfer and operations even if contract-based workers are performing them. Furthermore, BFSI companies can restrict user activity on a virtual machine (VM) in order to prevent unauthorized access to or transfer of information.

Legal Industry – AVD Keeps a Check on Cyberattacks

Like BFSI service providers, law firms are also soft targets for threat actors, given the amount of cash and classified data they preserve. As such, legal companies are always in dire need of secure, high-throughput systems that can access and store data reliably. Thanks to AVD’s multi-layered security features, law firms can strengthen their cybersecurity walls, thus slashing the odds of enduring cyberattacks. At the same time, employees can access critical documents no matter where they are or what device they are using and keep up with the ever-changing work demands.

Education – AVD Facilitates BYOD Experiences

Technology has become indispensable to educational institutions, particularly in the post-COVID economy. Particularly in schools, assigning devices and systems to each student is challenging as updating the hardware is a cost-intensive affair.

Moreover, effective learning demands high-end machines. Unfortunately, not all educational establishments can afford computers with the latest features. Although some schools allow students to learn from their devices, also called bring your own device (BYOD), this can pose serious security threats.

AVD helps colleges and schools install and run VMs with up-to-the-minute software without squandering on hardware. And they can achieve this with reduced computing power as the processing power sprouts from the VDI. Likewise, in the case of BYOD programs, AVD offers teachers and professors an eagle-eye view of students’ activities, regardless of the device in use. Further, these end-user devices receive the same optimized security as an institution-issued system.

Healthcare Industry – AVD Helps Remain Compliant

Data confidentiality is a pillar of all industries, and healthcare is no exception. Strict norms, like the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), mandate healthcare institutions to preserve patient and staff records. As such, keeping this information in insecure systems is a ticking time bomb. If any data leak occurs, the healthcare organization will have to bear hefty penalties while losing its authenticity.

With Azure Virtual Desktop, healthcare businesses can define permissions and rules, giving access to classified data to only specific stakeholders. Moreover, no data resides in the devices but instead on Azure cloud. Microsoft Azure boasts some of the most reliable data repositories, further complemented by multi-factor authentication and comprehensive threat management to ensure all relevant records are in safe places.

Given the feature-rich stack, AVD helps make devices and systems in healthcare organizations compliant, thus freeing up IT admins from worrying about local data storage and security practices.

Bring Sea Changes in the IT Fabric with AVD

Looking to power up remote or hybrid work? Azure Virtual Desktop can come to the rescue. Enterprises, irrespective of the sector, deploying AVD is well-placed to enjoy umpteen benefits in the form of flexibility, security, scalability, and cost savings.

Companies should examine their existing needs to decide whether AVD can be the missing piece of their IT infrastructure puzzle. A better option: connect with a managed service provider (MSP) like Anunta.

Anunta is a leading and credible Managed Desktop as a Service provider that offers a wide range of solutions and services related to Enterprise DaaS (Anunta Desktop360), Packaged DaaS, and Digital Workspace technology. Anunta’s team has over 10 years of experience in this field and has successfully migrated over 500,000 remote desktop users to the cloud. To learn more about AVD, its benefits, and our services, consult with our industry experts.

Keep Reading
By
In VDI

Top 6 Benefits of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Workspace

By 11 Mins Read

Remote working technologies are one of the many things that gained popularity during the coronavirus pandemic but have remained popular even after the pandemic has passed.

During this spell, the business world, particularly the IT sector, invested in and experimented with various novel technology solutions to keep the business running. One example of such a technology is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure or VDI.

The demand for VDI is growing rapidly as more IT organizations are embracing this novel technology. But what are the reasons behind VDI’s growing popularity, or what benefits does VDI provide?

This blog lists the 6 benefits of VDI workspace. But first, let’s take a quick look at the VDI definition.

What is (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) VDI?

VDI, or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, is a type of desktop virtualization in which desktop environments are hosted centrally on a server. In layman’s terms, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a technology that creates a simulated work environment using a company’s on-premise servers. This can be accessed by users working in the office or remotely via a network connection.

6 Key Benefits of VDI Workspace

VDI benefits organizations and users in several ways, from improving user mobility to lowering maintenance costs. Let’s take a closer look at each of the 6 advantages of the VDI workspace.

1. Enhanced User Mobility

As more and more IT organizations are shifting to a hybrid work model or remote working, the need for technology that allows end-users or employees to easily access resources (applications) or helps them stay connected with the rest of the team is increasing simultaneously.

Fortunately, VDI can help you achieve this requirement since it is hosted virtually.

Thanks to VDI, remote workers can easily access their systems from anywhere, at any time, regardless of time or location. End users do not need to worry about configuration, system version, or other technical issues.

Simply put, as long as you have a stable internet connection and a device (laptop, PC, tablet, or mobile phone), you can access your system and have the same experience as your local PC.

2. On-demand Scalability

Another significant advantage that VDI workspaces enjoy by embracing VDI technology is easy scalability.

Assume you’ve just started your company and have a staff of about 15 people. After a while, say 6 months, your company grows, and you hire 10 more workers to manage projects. So, you also purchased 10 more systems. Unfortunately, due to the recession, you will have to lay off 5 employees after 6 months. What about the systems you’ve purchased? You will have to keep them idle as they are now of no use.

However, if you have been using VDI from the beginning, you will not be in this situation. VDI enables organizations to quickly scale up or scale down resources, i.e., virtual machines, as per the changing needs.

Furthermore, you will be required to pay only for the license/subscription you are currently using. This will not only allow you to meet infrastructure needs instantly, but it will also save you money.

3. Improved Data Security

Data security is becoming a pressing issue for organizations from all industries with every passing day. As hackers and cyber-attackers are becoming more sophisticated, it is more important than ever to stay one step ahead of them in order to protect your data and brand reputation.

In traditional IT architecture, there are multiple endpoints. This also means a greater number of entry gates for cyber intruders. With VDI, however, you can reduce the number of entry points to one — only the server.

Not to mention that the server is often protected by several security protocols that are difficult to violate.

Besides that, VDI allows you to configure each virtual machine exactly how you want it. Furthermore, Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is protected by several advanced security protocols, which further increases the safety of remote systems.

4. Centralized Management

It is always beneficial to have centralized control over an organization’s entire infrastructure since it allows for better visibility and management. In VDI, the administrator will have complete control over the infrastructure and each virtual machine.

This will enable them to manage everything from their end. For example, they can schedule updates for all devices after working hours so that there is minimal downtime and no individual or team’s productivity suffers.

At the same time, if a cyberattack attempt is made, the administrator will be notified immediately. This will allow them to take immediate precautionary measures to safeguard the system.

In addition to that, the centralized structure of VDI allows the IT team to easily patch, update, or configure the virtual machines at the same time. This will significantly reduce the IT team’s workload and maintenance costs.

5. Cost Efficiency

The fifth major benefit that VDI workspaces enjoy is cost savings. VDI helps companies save money in different ways. For example, companies who have adopted VDI technology can save money on:

  • Hardware configuration
  • IT staff
  • System maintenance
  • Operational expenses
  • Subscription fees

Virtual desktop infrastructure empowers you to reduce IT infrastructure costs by right-sizing virtual machines and to unplug them when not in use.

Moreover, since all processing is done on the server, you will not need to invest heavily in end-point hardware. Instead, users can access the system via inexpensive thin clients or older devices. This is how you can save money on expensive hardware.

In the case of a traditional system, you will need a team of IT professionals to manage the IT infrastructure because there are multiple systems, hardware, and applications, each with its own set of requirements.

In contrast, in the case of VDI, there is only one system that requires attention – the server. Keeping it up to date and secure will ensure the smooth function of all other linked virtual machines.

6. Fast On-boarding

Traditionally, new recruits receive a paper dossier on their first working day – an “information treasury” packed with company policies and educational insights. However, what if the newly appointed staff receive this knowledge as soon as they join, more efficiently, and at a reduced cost?

That is exactly what virtual desktop infrastructure helps businesses achieve. The desktop virtualization solution trims the onboarding time in the following ways:

  • Easily updatable: Managers can immediately distribute updated materials and best practices
  • Lower cost: Only a single system requires patches and updates compared to the expensive alternative of updating several independent devices
  • No investments in hardware: New joinees can work from their own Internet-enabled devices, saving organizations tons of cash.

Most companies outsource a major fraction of their work to contingent workers – freelancers, part-timers, and independent contractors. Others are focusing more on seasonal recruitment. Moreover, for many, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) incite the need to bring teams across various locations together. The outcome is the same in each of these themes – employers must onboard loads of new users fast without the luxury of doing it face-to-face.

Virtual desktop infrastructure helps tackle these hurdles. Recruiters can offer complete access to virtual desktops and apps which they can commission (and decommission) as necessary. In addition, they can dump their existing virtual private network (VPN) over zero trust network access (ZTNA) to enable temporary workforces to get started in a jiffy.

All business leaders have to do is rope in the most suitable VDI service provider. Then deploy relevant resources through online corporate portals to every user and device, no matter where they reside.

These are the six major advantages of VDI that make it popular among IT institutions. In addition to these advantages, VDI provides several other benefits, such as quick setup, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), increased productivity, reduced license costs, and more.

Bottom Line: There is no denying that Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is one of the principal technologies that can significantly benefit remote working teams or hybrid workplaces. From lowering hardware and maintenance costs to improving mobility and data security to providing centralized infrastructure control, it benefits end-users and organizations in various ways. However, you will only be able to reap all of the benefits of VDI if it is properly deployed.

FAQs

What is one advantage offered by VDI?

While virtual desktop services boast a slew of advantages, the one area where they stand out is the ability to promote adjustable workplaces. As hybrid work and BYOD become a part of the corporate agenda, businesses are looking for the right tools to experience that flexibility. VDI offers accessibility, which is beneficial for employees who desire to work from anywhere.

With the near ubiquity of super-fast Internet connections across continents, employers no longer instruct their colleagues to sit next to them in the same office cubicle. Additionally, they want to hire the best people for the job, whenever and wherever they work. VDI setups provide organizations with such flexibility.

What are the benefits of VDI?

Virtual desktop infrastructure comes with multiple benefits, some of which include:

  • Cost-efficiency: Enterprises avoid expenses due to managing many individual user licenses. Additionally, they can utilize a data center’s storage and computing capabilities instead of purchasing costly hardware and servers.
  • Streamlined management: The IT pros can patch updated versions of any OS and application to all the relevant workstations from a central station. This frees them to focus on more important matters.
  • Lesser security threats: All the critical resources are stored in centralized servers, keeping them more secure. Incidents of employees unintentionally transferring viruses while sharing or downloading classified materials, thus, decline.
  • Remote work friendly: Employees can access enterprise data and applications via virtual workstations from any location and a compatible device.
  • Geo-replication: In a VDI setting, data exists in numerous locations. Hence, if one location’s hardware crashes due to outages or natural disasters, users can access data from another.

 

What are the pros and cons of VDI?

The pros of VDI include:

  • Borderless access: Employees can log into virtual desktops and access corporate resources from anywhere – at home, at a nearby café, or someplace else.
  • Difficult to compromise: Transferring files on virtual desktop infrastructure is highly secure as employees use a company-issued security framework instead of an external network. Moreover, the content on virtual desktop screens is read-only; users cannot install/update any (suspicious) applications or manipulate any configurations.
  • Scalable: Companies can deploy additional resources and storage in advance and increase/decrease them as required. Moreover, the IT staff can manage groups of end-users and apply an image in a few minutes.

VDI comes with the following cons:

  • Endpoint security: While virtual desktops offer optimum protection, monitoring every security measure separately is time- and effort-intensive.
  • High installation costs: Deploying a virtual desktop infrastructure is cost-prohibitive, both in terms of human resources and technologies. A VDI journey persists for several weeks, or even months, thus translating to radical changes for the entire workforce.
  • Latency issues: Running compute-heavy applications, including videoconferencing tools or high-definition graphics, can create latency, hampering the user experience.

 

What are the 3 major benefits of using virtualization?

Virtualization boasts the following key benefits:

  • Minimal downtime: Provisioning and deploying are straightforward in virtualized environments, allowing for replicating the compromised virtual machine (VM).
  • Lower expenses: Companies save fortunes as they need limited hardware and, subsequently, lesser personnel to manage systems and troubleshoot user issues. Moreover, maintaining virtual servers is easier than physical ones.
  • Faster back-ups: By cloning the existing servers in the IT infrastructure, businesses can create a readily available backup and deploy it whenever a problem occurs in the data center.

 

What is the purpose of a virtual desktop?

The primary objective of virtual desktop services is to help organizations better handle their workloads in a more efficient, scalable, and economical manner. VDI is basically a digital copy of physical workstations residing in a server. Hence, users can access and share business-critical data and apps from the centralized servers from any endpoint device. Furthermore, VDI is seeing an adoption uptick as it eliminates the need for expensive hardware and the staff needed to maintain and manage them.

Anunta is a leading and credible Managed Desktop as a Service provider that offers a wide range of solutions and services related to Enterprise DaaS (Anunta Desktop360), Packaged DaaS, and Digital Workspace technology. Anunta’s team has over 10 years of experience in this field and has successfully migrated over 500,000 remote desktop users to the cloud. To learn more about VDI technology, its benefits, and our services, consult with our industry experts.

Keep Reading
By
In VDI

Windows Virtual Desktop Vs. Remote Desktop Services: Which Aligns Better with Business Growth?

By 10 Mins Read

Virtualization technology came into being about two decades ago. However, with numerous IT advances in the tech realm, the desktop virtualization journey only got better. Besides, the dramatic changes in work cultures, accentuated by the global health event, have pointed to more obvious cloud-based solutions: Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) and Remote Desktop Service (RDS).

These virtualization technologies have played wonderfully in supporting the overnight shift to remote and hybrid work environments. Pioneered by Microsoft, both Windows Virtual Desktop and Windows Remote Desktop Services offer pretty similar functionalities. However, the differences between the two experiences lie internally, as each has a different licensing model, back end, and user base.

This article is a head-to-head comparison between WVD and RDS, complemented by a verdict toward the end.

The Basics

Windows Virtual Desktop is an all-encompassing cloud service running in Azure for virtualizing desktops and applications. More precisely, it is a stack of Microsoft technologies to develop virtual desktops for end-users. WVD comes with a single virtualized instance of the Windows Client operating system (OS), provided via Azure or directly to an organization’s network and domain. Furthermore, the desktop virtualization solution optimizes Office 365 ProPlus, multi-session Windows 10, and support for RDS environments.

Remote Desktop Services (RDS) link end-user devices (remote or onsite) – the terminals – with the host system or server over a network connection. Earlier called terminal services, RDS enables users to log into a device from any location and run and access databases, apps, files, and network resources. Hence, it is regarded as shared computing. Further, only those remote user devices supporting Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) can be a part of this nexus.

Operating System

Windows Remote Desktop is limited to a single server OS wherein end-users access the OS on their devices, akin to the server OS. It is a Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) model, allowing users to pick storage, server type, and security groups. With RDS, businesses can ensure secure remote desktop access for their employees where OS and infrastructure might depend on a remote server machine. However, this entire setup triggers issues around user experience and application compatibility.

Unlike RDS, Windows Virtual Desktop is not limited to a single OS or application architecture. As such, end-users’ devices can run on different OSs like iOS and Android. WVD functions on a desktop-based OS – multi-user Windows 10. The virtualization tech delivers an integrated public cloud for hosting companies’ applications and systems. Moreover, the scalable OS enables multiple Windows 10 users to connect on a single virtual machine (VM).

WVD is both infrastructure and platform services (IaaS and PaaS), where VM is the host, and the remainder of the service is PaaS. With significantly fewer devices to look after, WVD is a more specific setting than RDS for organizations’ IT teams.

Licensing

To deploy RDS, organizations need to buy server OS licensing, Client Access License (CAL), and Subscriber Access License (SAL) for desktop deployment in Azure. Not to mention the additional VMs to operate and manage. Putting all these elements together is expensive and complicated, and maintaining a virtual desktop setting properly licensed with time further adds to the problem.

There is no need for CAL for Windows Virtual Desktop. Users can continue with their existing Microsoft 365 (Business, A3, A5, E3, or E5) or a standalone Windows 10 subscribership. The only additional costs include Azure storage, computing, and networking related to the VMs used. In a nutshell, organizations enjoy all Office 365 functionalities, Edge, OneDrive, and Azure Marketplace.

Also, as enterprises increasingly turn to Microsoft 365 anyway, WVD becomes a zero-fee add-on to an already existing subscribership, saving end-users money each month.

IT Management

In RDS, enterprises have complete control of the ecosystem. That said, they can outsource some infrastructure roles, such as RD Gateway, RD connection broker, and RD web access, to Managed Service Providers (MSP) offering DaaS or IaaS. These roles receive a user’s connection request, determine its appropriate destination, and place it on the relevant desktop VM. However, this required additional server equipment and ongoing administration, for instance, monitoring and Windows patching.

As WVD is PaaS, the service provider (Microsoft) takes care of these infrastructure roles, alongside software updates, installation, and monitoring. So, when end clients connect, they land at Microsoft’s control plane first and are later verified and redirected to the relevant desktop based on their permissions. This not only trims the cost of infrastructure required to support virtual devices but also saves on ongoing administration labor.

Security Framework

As RDS is entirely server-based, IT teams can run any corporate application, even the older versions. The desktop virtualization experience offers more data security as it is deployed on a private cloud or on-prem by MSPs. Additionally, all security measures, including firewalls, antivirus, or OS patching, are only dedicated to a specific end client.

Windows Virtual Desktop, on the flip side, operates on a public cloud network. Therefore, the Internet, firewalls, or patching is shared among multiple users. Also, IT pros cannot run third-party apps but the existing desktop apps with suitable configurations. Finally, as WVD does not run on servers, it has to connect with other servers in the Azure setting to become functional for end-users. So, making it bank-grade secure could become challenging.

Migration: Which one is easier?

Desktop virtualization technologies have attracted organizations worldwide with their enormous benefits, with employees, especially, enjoying the flexibility of accessing work resources from any region. As companies press the digital transformation lever harder, some are analyzing WVD and remote desktops as potential answers to hybrid/remote working.

That said, decision-makers must be diligent about the user-friendliness of both these desktop virtualization solutions. Remote desktops are easy to install as they require fewer components. End-users utilize shared critical resources functioning on a common OS instance, enabling the commissioning of workstations in a flash. In addition, RDS is a great choice for enterprises looking for mutual servers with group policies, profiling options, and IT administrators who manage access controls. However, users cannot customize their desktops and applications as needed since everybody accesses OS during their desktop sessions and is confined within the same configuration. Besides, if many users distribute the server’s resources simultaneously, companies can endure contention and performance issues.

Conversely, WVD is more suitable for enterprises desiring the near-accurate experience of physical systems from remote desktops, along with at-scale personalization. The flip side of all this flexibility, however, is its complexity. Companies must have competent IT personnel to deploy and maintain WVD.

Nonetheless, WVD’s impeccable adaptability makes it ideal for businesses employing diverse workforces for multiple use cases. In addition, the technology does not have compatibility issues as every user is allotted a dedicated VM operating an independent OS. Consequently, employees do not confront performance issues as IT professionals can allocate more power to those who actually need it.

The Bottom Line

So, which desktop virtualization solution ranks the highest? There is no fixed answer as it banks on organizations’ various factors, preferences, and needs.

Businesses with many employees using the same resources and applications would find RDS better. On the other hand, WVD is a better pick for more sophisticated and customizable user configurations.

Eventually, it all squares down to the IT teams to decide which virtual experience is best in times when companies are increasingly taking their devices and applications to the cloud.

FAQs

Does Windows virtual desktop use RDP?

Windows Virtual Desktop leverages remote desktop protocol (RDP) to fine-tune the delivery of servers’ remote graphics to client workstations over corporate networks. RDP modifies different parameters in real-time to offer the optimal user experience based on the availability of computing resources, use cases, and network bandwidth.

Microsoft initially rolled out RDP with Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition (codenamed Hydra). Since then, the business-centric OS has been continuously evolving with every Windows Server and Microsoft Windows launch. Today, RDP supports numerous types of transport stacks.

Is VDI and RDC the same?

While both VDC and RDC are desktop virtualization technologies, they differ when it comes to technological setup and delivering remote desktop experiences.

Remote desktops run on the server-based OS. A single server can host multiple active user sessions. However, RDC does not provide individual OS instances to end-users. Instead, users access shared desktop environments operating on remote servers to use the same computing power, OS, and applications.

Virtual desktops run on desktop-based OS hosted by the hypervisor server(s). Every user maintains their own VM instances, which are accessible from their personal devices, irrespective of their location. Further, VDI offers a centralized public cloud network for hosting applications and desktops.

How does Windows virtual desktop compare to the classical RDS environment?

Both WVD and traditional RDS are remote desktop protocols; however, they have various technical differences.

For instance, WVD delivers a pre-engineered image of applications or OS – separate from devices used to access them. RDS, on the other hand, enables users to access systems stationed in another location and connect to them as if they are actually working on them.

Further, companies can set up RDS on-site or on a private cloud managed by third parties, while WVD operates on a public cloud network. As such, firewalls, patching, and the Internet is distributed among multiple users.

Is VDI faster than RDP?

Virtual desktops have the edge over remote desktops as they compartmentalize the resources, offering a smoother user experience. Moreover, VDI delivers performance equivalent to standalone desktops with dedicated resources for every VM, including GPU power, for heavy graphics and media.

Thus, virtual desktops find use in graphic-reliant software, such as AutoCAD, that consume excessive processing power.

On the flip side, RDP users access desktop sessions via the Windows Server OS, which falls well short for latency-intensive workloads, including video/audio conferencing. Also, RDP’s performance takes a toll when organizations have to facilitate a diverse set of users.

What is Windows virtual desktop used for?

WVD offers an easy-to-use and secure virtual desktop setup for a company’s workforce. It takes care of the remote work demands by delivering a foolproof platform for cloud VDI. End-users can log into Windows desktop servers and hosts remotely, hence, remain productive without keeping IT security at stake.

With Windows virtual desktops, businesses can focus on image management and user access control while deploying virtual workstations and applications. Microsoft looks after all the remaining services. This considerably slashes the amount of administration and overhead needed to support a VDI setting.
Furthermore, the Windows 10 enterprise multi-session feature enables several end-users to connect to remote desktops simultaneously. This provides them with an experience they witness while using physical systems.

Is Microsoft remote desktop a VDI?

Microsoft remote desktop solutions mimic VDI when it comes to managing remote workstations or virtual machines over a secure network connection. That said, virtual desktop solutions offer users a single virtualized instance of the Windows Client OS, delivered via Azure or straight to the company’s network. On the contrary, Microsoft remote desktops enable multiple users to log into virtual machines or OS. Users can join a remote desktop session and share the servers’ applications, OS, and hardware resources.

Keep Reading
By
In DaaS

Maximize Your Recurring Revenue Potential with Anunta DaaS Partner Program

By 5 Mins Read

In its latest Market Guide for Desktop as a Service (DaaS), Gartner projects that the global DaaS market will grow by more than 250% between 2021 and 2024.

The rapid adoption of hybrid and remote working has constituted this increase in demand for DaaS by making it a priority for organizations around the globe. The surge of DaaS adoption also results from business efforts to reduce the cost of desktop infrastructure, especially in a time of ongoing economic uncertainty. Improving desktop security in order to meet increasingly rigid compliance and privacy requirements is another factor driving massive interest in DaaS.

DaaS’s ability to simplify desktop management and support services, too – and by extension, to reduce the burden placed on IT teams – also reinforces the value that DaaS brings to business today.

As such, DaaS presents one of the richest business opportunities available to resellers and managed service providers today.

Anunta DaaS Partner Program: An Easy Onramp to the DaaS Market

Planning, implementing, and supporting DaaS infrastructure present deep challenges, even for experienced IT resellers and service providers.

Anunta’s DaaS Partner Program is purpose-built to provide resellers and managed service providers with an easy means of offering white-labeled DaaS solutions to their clients in any industry. By working with Anunta, the MSP partners gain access to all the resources they need to deliver profitable DaaS products, without having to build, maintain, or support them themselves.

Since Anunta’s DaaS provides on-demand virtual desktops hosted on any public cloud, or on customers’ on-premises infrastructure using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) technology from vendors including Microsoft, VMware and Citrix, it gives partners creative ways to win customers from any business vertical.

Capitalizing on the enormous opportunity presented by the DaaS market can be quite easy as an Anunta DaaS partner. Let’s take a look at the benefits of the program.

1. Maximize Your Recurring Revenue

Because of the projected market growth, DaaS is an excellent offering for resellers and service providers who want to build steady recurring revenue streams. When well designed, implemented, and managed, DaaS offerings will yield multi-year customer contracts that ensure ongoing revenue.

As an Anunta DaaS partner resellers and MSPs can gain access to the expertise they need not to just get started with DaaS, but to create a DaaS offering that maximizes revenue and profitability, no matter which industries they work in or which type of customers they support.

2. Deliver a DaaS Solution Quickly and Easily

Building a DaaS offering from scratch requires having to master a range of technologies, such as VDI-oriented virtualization platforms and cloud desktop platforms. There is also the necessity to set up unique processes for supporting and updating DaaS environments. Resellers and MSPs will also need to design, implement, and manage the infrastructure that powers their DaaS offering.

As an Anunta DaaS partner, resellers and MSs can deploy a complete DaaS offering to their customers with minimal investment of time and resources. Anunta provides not just the DaaS platform, but also the proprietary intellectual property and advanced automation tools that resellers and service providers need to make production-ready DaaS solutions available to their customers.

3. Maximize End User Satisfaction

Without a rock-solid DaaS platform and the specialized expertise necessary to support it, delivering on end-user expectations can be a real challenge.

Being an Anunta DaaS partner, you can bank on reliability uptime rates of 99.98% or higher, which translates to high end-user satisfaction. This, in turn, helps resellers and service providers improve customer retention rates and ensure reliable streams of recurring revenue.

4. Access Specialized DaaS Expertise

For more than a decade, Anunta has specialized in designing, implementing, and supporting VDI and DaaS environments for companies around the globe, equipping us with the necessary expertise to address every business’s unique requirements. And as an Anunta DaaS partner, you’ll have ready access to the guidance and evaluation services you need to tailor your DaaS offerings to each of your customers.

5. Leverage DaaS Sales and Marketing Resources

Unlike other IT services and products, DaaS is not a category with which many businesses are familiar. As such, marketing and selling DaaS products could be a challenge.

As an Anunta DaaS partner, resellers and MSPs get special access to sales and marketing tools, which will help them build awareness, find qualified buyers, and effectively close deals. Our joint go-to-market campaigns also help expose your brand to customers who otherwise might not know about you or your offerings.

6. Stand Apart in the DaaS Market

With the growth of the DaaS market, the chances that you will have heavy competition is high and standing apart in the market might turn out to be a challenge.

As an industry-trusted DaaS provider with 10+ years of experience, Anunta is uniquely positioned to help our partners scale their VDI business with programs that align with their business models, thus enhancing their brand value. Our record-setting levels of reliability, performance, and customer satisfaction act as differentiating factors for your brand.

Conclusion

With the freedom to choose from a variety of offerings to create custom packages and flexible contracts that help you retain total ownership of all your customer relationships, Anunta’s DaaS Partner Program is the ideal way to scale your business while ensuring a recurring stream of revenue.

Read our whitepaper to understand the benefits of the partner program in detail.

If you’re already convinced and want to become a partner, reach out to us at partnerconnect@anuntatech.com and we will get in touch with you.

Keep Reading
By
In DaaS

The Role of DaaS in IT Infrastructure and Operations Innovation

By 5 Mins Read

According to Gartner, the future of IT infrastructure and operations is simple enough to predict. Gartner distills the major themes of modern IT into six basic trends that it says will reshape the way IT organizations approach infrastructure and operations tasks.

If you look closely at those trends, you’ll notice that Desktop-as-a-Service, or DaaS, is a clear solution for operationalizing each of them. Although Gartner doesn’t explicitly point to DaaS (which it has analyzed separately) as a major enabler of innovation in IT infrastructure and operations, it’s clear enough if you read between the lines that DaaS goes hand-in-hand with the future of IT.

To prove the point, let’s walk through each of the six trends that Gartner has identified as being at the core of IT infrastructure and operations innovation, and discuss how DaaS fits into each of them.

1. Anywhere operations

The first trend, which Gartner calls anywhere operations, reflects the need of IT organizations to deploy infrastructure that allows employees to work from anywhere, at any time.

No infrastructure solution achieves this goal better than DaaS. By providing employees with secure desktop environments that they can access from any location with an Internet connection, DaaS lays the foundation for anywhere operations – and, by extension, helps businesses to take full advantage of remote work models.

2. Optimal infrastructure

According to Gartner, businesses are increasingly seeking “optimal infrastructure,” is aimed at “ensuring strong returns for infrastructure investment.”

Although desktop infrastructure is only one component of overall infrastructure spend, DaaS is the obvious solution for optimizing the cost of desktop systems. With DaaS, businesses no longer have to invest in costly on-premises desktop hardware, or the high-effort maintenance operations required to support it. They can simply spin up desktop systems in the cloud on demand.

What’s more, DaaS also lets businesses shift from a CapEx-focused infrastructure spending model to an OpEx model, which brings even more agility to infrastructure budgets.

3. Operational continuity

Gartner says that “IT services must be continuous, regardless of external factors.” That means IT teams need infrastructure that can deliver a flawless, zero-downtime experience.

Achieving this goal with conventional desktop infrastructure is very difficult. Local systems are prone to hardware failure, not to mention issues like the risk of data loss due to failed hard disks, inaccessibility during power outages and so on.

With DaaS, however, operational continuity becomes baked into desktop infrastructure. DaaS systems remain operational – and the data and applications hosted on them remain safe – regardless of what happens to local offices or the devices that employees use to access cloud-based desktop systems. Although it’s still a best practice to back up DaaS systems, the risk of downtime – and, by extension, disruption to business continuity – is fundamentally lower when companies shift to DaaS infrastructure.

4. Core modernization

According to Gartner, modern IT organizations are investing in “core modernization,” which means evolving infrastructure to take advantage of newer technologies.

On the server side of the equation, those technologies may involve innovations like containers and microservices. But from a desktop infrastructure perspective, they should focus on the type of enhancements that DaaS alone can deliver. DaaS brings the same agility, cost-effectiveness and reliability improvements to desktop infrastructure that containers and microservices offer to server-side workloads.

5. Distributed cloud

Distributed cloud, which Gartner defines as “the decentralization of cloud resources,” is another trend that can be operationalized from the desktop perspective through DaaS. With DaaS, local, centralized desktop systems are replaced with flexible virtual desktop environments that can be hosted in any cloud data center – a key advantage for businesses that need to keep data and applications in a specific region in order to meet compliance or privacy goals.

At the same time, however, DaaS makes it easy for IT teams to centralize administration by managing all desktop environments through a central platform. They get the performance and reliability benefits of distributed infrastructure while also enjoying the administrative advantages of centralized management tooling.

6. Critical skills vs. critical roles

The final major infrastructure and operations trend that Gartner points to, which it describes as a shift from “critical roles” to “critical skills,” involves a focus on ensuring that IT practitioners have the broad set of skills necessary to do multiple jobs, rather than designating specific roles for specific tasks.

While this trend involves personnel more than infrastructure itself, businesses that shift to DaaS will find it easier to take a skills-based approach to infrastructure management. The reason why is that with DaaS, desktop infrastructure becomes more consistent and easier to administer. Instead of having to support hundreds of unique desktop computing devices spread across a wide geographic area, IT teams can manage virtual desktop instances running on a standardized, centralized cloud platform.

In this way, DaaS makes desktop support skills easier to obtain, and it significantly lowers the risk that the departure of certain IT staff members will leave businesses unable to support certain systems.

Conclusion

From enabling remote work, to improving infrastructure ROI, to simplifying infrastructure support operations and beyond, DaaS plays a central role in helping businesses to innovate with regard to IT infrastructure and operations. As businesses seek to build better and better IT infrastructures by following the trends Gartner identifies, DaaS should be at the core of their investment strategy.

Keep Reading
By
In End-user Experience

5 Benefits of End-user Computing in the Digitalized Business Economy

By 5 Mins Read

In any IT ecosystem, the end-users are crucial stakeholders. Their productivity hinges on the availability and flexibility of their companies’ IT architecture. In addition, the recent global health events have compelled business owners to put more emphasis on remote working.

Today’s workforce is exceptionally mobile, opting to work in several environments with multiple devices. Moreover, tech-savvy users have become accustomed to prompt access to critical resources stored in the cloud on their mobile devices.

End-user computing (EUC) – driven by mobile computing, virtualization, and cloud computing – has played an instrumental role in this paradigm shift so much that its adoption is likely to mushroom almost 2X during 2022-2027.

This article discusses how deploying EUC is synonymous with business growth.

Easier Management of Device Fleet

Imagine a conventional corporate environment brimming with a sheer volume of desktops (virtual and real) and mobile devices. Add to that the amount of effort drained in troubleshooting, updating, or patching all these physical machines separately. The entire process is a management nightmare as updates/upgrades keep rolling out.

With EUC, IT teams and admins can manage these devices from an integrated interface. Install new security patches, updates, and applications, manage the operating system (OS), and onboard new employees in just a few clicks.

What is more, companies can keep an eye on the number and nature of applications installed by users on their devices. That way, they can add or remove users to optimize the network and compute usage during peak or idle times accordingly.

Freedom to Use Own Devices

Earlier, in companies of all sizes and industries, employers were responsible for distributing hardware devices to employees upon joining. While this might have served the purpose in an analog world, in today’s digital economy, it is a battle lost already.

Once deployed over the cloud in the form of virtual desktops, EUC offers users the liberty to work with the device of their choice. As such, they can function in a friendlier and more convenient tech setting. Moreover, they can better display their expertise with their preferred technology while keeping organizations from squandering more on new devices.

Otherwise known as bring your own device (BYOD), this natural shift to user-centric IT helps employees strike the right balance between professional and personal lives.

And these benefits are not unique to only businesses now. Non-profits/NGOs, government agencies, and educational institutions also can leverage the EUC technology. Case in point, schools can conduct one-on-one coverage initiatives to ensure students have a computer to learn from during teaching sessions. Citing tight education budgets, EUC solutions offer schools the flexibility with students being able to learn from their own devices.

Minimum Working Constraints

In traditional corporate settings, the in-house IT personnel controlled and constricted devices and their capabilities. Employees could barely install applications of their choice or change the personalization settings. Fortunately, EUC tech offers employees more flexibility in the form of hardware, software, data access, and content formats. This freedom makes it easier for them to not only improve at their jobs but also connect with one another and the clientele.

Secure End-user Environment

Keeping data safe has always been a critical concern in various EUC implementations, especially in government, finance, and healthcare industries. Physical end-point systems and devices are prone to digital intrusions, which happen due to employees’ negligence. Besides, constant failures and inadequate disaster recovery (DR) plans frustrate end-users, providing more sweet spots for threat actors.

Complementing EUC capabilities with cloud infrastructure is the answer to having sound security in place. Moreover, the centralized nature of EUC enables users to access data from high-security cloud servers instead of having to store them in multiple endpoint devices.

To further strengthen security at the end-point level, cloud providers offer cyber security features, like OS patching, DDoS protection, and firewalls, with their EUC offerings. Measures, such as multi-factor authentication, zero-trust architecture (ZTA), or embedded security, helps ensure all users and devices are verified every time they connect to the enterprise network and then grant access only when needed.

Hence, even if an employee’s device is stolen or lost, organizations do not risk losing crucial resources and data.

Workforce Becomes More Mobile

A survey by FlexJobs has revealed that 97% of employees want to work either fully or partially remotely post the COVID-19 chapter. Additionally, they use at least one mobile device to access their work, irrespective of their geographic location.

Supporting a remote workforce is now mandatory in nearly every company. However, for businesses with an at-scale physical foothold, delivering uniform online workplace resources can be troublesome. This means organizations’ IT crews must embrace new realities and challenges in end-point control and configuration. Put differently, a more sophisticated stack of online platforms.

EUC delivers on that promise as it is advanced enough to serve hardware-agnostic device management. Moreover, the technology is an initial step toward a hybrid multi-cloud environment that can foster this diversity without compromising corporate operational norms.

Thanks to EUC capabilities, adding new users and minimizing troubleshooting tasks is significantly easy. With granular policy execution, organizations can install and configure devices remotely within minutes to avoid prolonged downtime.

Moving Forward

Whether looking through an enterprise or employee lens, the benefits of cloud-powered EUC are enormous. The wide-ranging transformation of workplaces and technology will continue to gain heat despite the ongoing global events.

The EUC industry is undergoing disruption with innovations that will make endpoint computing more productive, secure, and cost-efficient. As the end-user technology continues to snowball, demand will only go north.

However, adapting to these new norms amidst the worldwide business uncertainty poses numerous challenges. That said, organizations have the ideal opportunity to welcome the long-term rewards EUC solutions deliver.

For more insights into end-user computing, connect with the experts at Anunta today!

Keep Reading
By
Load More

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR BLOG

Subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff and updates to your email inbox.