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.
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.
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:
Even with these challenges, Gartner says, “DaaS will continue to mature and increase in adoption through 2025.”
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.
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.
Mitul Rajput is Sr. Vice President – COE at Anunta. He has been at the forefront of the Center of Excellence at Anunta for close to a decade.
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