So You Are Thinking About Moving to Virtual Desktops or Desktop as a Service
The latest IT direction is to Virtual Desktops or VDI. Gartner has stated that by 2019, over 50% of the new Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) users will be deployed on a DaaS (Desktop as a Service) platform.
- The benefits of VDI and DaaS to your company can be extremely beneficial. These include:
- Rapid deployment of supported desktops across your network.
- Central deployment of updates and changes.
- Reduced hardware requirement for the local physical device.
- Great for BYOD (bring your own device) environments.
- Ease of management for remote locations.
- Enhanced security.
Just like most things there are some potential pitfall that need to be addressed when evaluating VDI. These include:
- VDI projects can be expensive.
- You still have too manage at the local level
- IT is still required for the physical devices
- Software licensing
When looking into VDI/DaaS the thing to keep in mind is that there are multiple solutions that are available to tackle your business need. In addition to full blown VDI you can use a hybrid solution. Some of the more popular hybrid solutions include:
- Citrix for presenting applications
- Terminal services with remote apps
- Remote Desktop to a full server
Another consideration with your DaaS initiative is connectivity. For businesses we prefer to see our customers using a peer to peer VPN. Bandwidth requirements vary depending on the application and the access to files. Typically you would prefer to have file servers in the same data center as the desktops to avoid latency issues.
If you are considering a VDI/DaaS initiative we have deployed single desktops running applications like Quickbooks and Peachtree, hybrid solutions running Citrix and Terminal Services, and full blown VDI running XenDesktop and VMware Horizon. On a daily basis we see business’ realizing the benefits of DaaS/VDI.
