The recent COVID-19 pandemic has forced many businesses to reconsider their infrastructure in a bid to create an environment that enhances security, facilitates the use of modern applications and improves workforce capabilities. However, this all needs to occur in a way that reduces the costs of resources and removes the challenges that currently stand in the way of innovation and progress.
Traditional desktop environments, which most outdated business infrastructures are based upon, are becoming more and more difficult to manage. A recent report by Citrix, entitled ‘Are Desktops Doomed?’ revealed that compliance, procurement costs and software licencing were felt to be the biggest challenges facing those businesses living with traditional desktop environments – meaning their IT departments were often overburdened.
To try and overcome these challenges, many businesses are now choosing to move to hybrid cloud environments, as these often offer them the capability to recreate their infrastructure using new solutions such as Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
The adoption of DaaS and VDI is growing rapidly as they are not only useful for powering hybrid cloud environments to help businesses overcome infrastructure challenges, but they can also help businesses to better collaborate, expand and scale, and also improve productivity and security – whilst also helping IT professionals to better balance their responsibilities.
Businesses need to be able to easily facilitate this transition from traditional desktop environments to environments that can host their workloads anywhere, on any device that they want. Ebb3 can help to create new workspaces using virtual desktops to allow employees to access the work applications they need to succeed at their role, while also keeping up with the expectations of your IT department.
Setting up digital workspace environments in the cloud
The desktop virtualization market was valued at $6712.8 million last year (2020) and is expected to reach $12290.22 million by 2026 – with most of the growth being driven by cloud deployment.
Business environments, therefore, need to be not only agile and flexible but also secure – so that employees can work on the device they want to use, wherever they are, leaving IT teams free to focus on their core responsibilities. For this reason, more and more businesses are turning to hybrid cloud infrastructures and digital workspace environments and using DaaS and VDI solutions to power these.
Whether your employees are interacting with customers or managing your finances, they need to be able to work to the best of their capabilities wherever they are, and not be limited to being sat at a high-powered desktop on-site at your business location. They should be able to work on a laptop, tablet or even a smartphone at work or at home, and still be able to deliver their work to a high standard – and this past twelve months should have taught us this lesson if nothing else.
Employee preferences, frequent new features, and improving security are really driving the need for digital workspaces – and the cloud is a great way to create a centralised and secure IT management environment that really focuses on the end-user experience. This is one reason why DaaS and VDI are becoming so popular too, as they offer businesses the virtual solutions and capabilities that drive improvements.
Digital workspaces have many benefits, including:
Reduced end-user downtime relating to management and security issues
Simplified desktop management to improve efficiency
Streamlined application and patch management
They are ideal for many businesses as the devices that most employees use to access their work do not store company information. This information is stored in the cloud, which not only helps from a security point of view but also means there is no need for expensive hardware capabilities or for the employee to have access to fast internet. Ultimately, it just makes things easier for the end-user too.
Addressing the challenges of traditional desktop environments
As we outlined above, the challenges that are being faced by those businesses relying on traditional desktop environments tend to include:
Desktop updating
High procurement costs
High operational costs
Keeping up with changes in technology
Software licencing and compliance
In this new world of business where remote work has become the new normal, and people are starting to use their own personal devices to work from – using applications and virtual desktops is a great way to provide employees with access to all of the different applications and data they need, on any device, with any network connection.
VDI and DaaS strategies are also helping businesses to scale up as and when needed, especially when they rely on freelance contracts or seasonal hires for example – and they can also make expanding to new regions and countries much easier. Even in the face of disruption, such as the coronavirus pandemic, VDIs have allowed people to continue to work from anywhere with IT costs remaining manageable due to subscription-based models.
VDI can help address some of the major challenges that traditional desktop environments bring, helping collaboration and making it easier for your IT department to manage both risk and security issues.
As you can see, switching from a traditional desktop environment to a virtual one can be an important step in improving your employees’ productivity, empowering innovation and building a business infrastructure that can be scaled to fit your workforce’s digital needs while balancing the complexities of IT environments.
Get in touch with the team at ebb3 to find out more about how our DaaS and VDI solutions can help you power your business.
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