DaaS relieves IT responsibilities by maintaining virtual desktops and applications and is an ideal, cost effective solution for organization with low IT budgets. Earlier, IT staff used to login from individual computers to perform a task such as upgrades or system changes for each user. The concept of DaaS in a cloud hosted infrastructure works by allowing client hardware to connect with a remote server for secure access. User desktops, whether they are in-house or remote will connect to a remote server on the cloud for changes to be effected. IT staff can securely access client systems even in remote locations and perform application changes.
DaaS Adoption Trends
By adopting DaaS a company can provide applications, information and data anywhere, anytime and on any device. Evolve IP a cloud services company did a survey titled 2015 State of the Desktop, to understand the challenges of desktop management. Their survey involved 1031 IT professionals and organizations worldwide.
Evolve IP survey results indicate that over 37% of the organizations had desktop services or VDI already implemented in their business and another 33% have plans to implement desktop virtualization in the next one to three years. 65% of executives cited mobility, BYOD as an excellent benefit of virtual desktops.
Citrix in their report titled ‘2015 Desktop-as-a-service global market trends’ explain that over 49% organizations prefer DaaS model to grow their business and another 22% prefer cloud VDI.
Citrix report also provided insights on virtual desktop adoption among different industry verticals globally that comprises of 11% adoption in financial institutions and manufacturing industries, 10% in healthcare, 9% in legal, construction, retail, education, government and public sector and 6% other industries.
According to Research & Markets, global VDI market is poised for growth at CAGR of around 27.35% in 2016-2020.
Business advantages of DaaS
The trends provided above from industry sources indicate that DaaS helps companies to overcome the problems of acquiring, developing and managing an internal infrastructure through desktop virtualization. DaaS offers numerous benefits, a few key benefits include,
- For users or employees DaaS provides high-quality experience on any device.
- For IT, the service is simple to deploy and highly secure, also DaaS is scalable
- For business, it improves agility and productivity and reduces costs for organizations
In virtual desktops, data is not stored locally because they access data and applications through the cloud. With DaaS, the integration of major upgrades or patch applications is performed quickly by allowing the client computers (internal and remote) to connect to the cloud server on VPN. It is a good option for organizations that are low on budgets that face deployment challenges and when there is a need to replace client systems.
Compared to physical desktops, DaaS offers many compelling business benefits,
- Cost Effectiveness: According to IDC, desktop as a service can reduce capital expenditure by over 56% and also offers to reduce annual operating expenditure. The cost of virtual desktop is two times less compared to a traditional PC because of its low power consumption and the absence of no local hard disk. For example, if a company decides to upgrade software, virtual desktop service enables the reuse of existing hardware and ensures the life of individual PC investments are extended. This reduces significant capital expenses for the company.
- Easy to deploy: DaaS is fast and easy to deploy different use cases. Time is considerably reduced as organizations no longer have to wait for weeks or months to get their physical desktops ready for implementing new software or systems. Desktop virtualization offers organizational agility and flexibility by providing all necessary desktops with resources within hours. Also, if an organization has undergone a recent merger or acquisition, DaaS deployments can overcome challenges in integrating disparate infrastructure and integrates new employees into the corporate systems quickly without a major IT overhaul.
- Better Security: In business environments, a personal computer or a laptop can be hacked, stolen or lost. In this case all data and important information is lost. VDI addresses this issue by storing all sensitive information on the remote server and nothing is stored locally. Further, individual computers are vulnerable to viruses, malware, etc. which can infect corporate LAN. With desktop as a service, it is difficult for viruses, worms or malware to penetrate cloud systems. This results in low risk in terms of security. With DaaS, centralized updates, continuous back up and synchronization of data ensures easy compliance.
- Prevention against data Loss: Traditional business desktops are likely to be damaged in the event of natural disaster. Virtual desktops store data in remote locations thus ensuring data is protected and available at all times. Business continuity is also ensured because employees can access their data and applications without interruptions using any device even after a disaster event has occurred.
- Mobility: Access to applications and data is possible from anywhere using any type of device (smart phones, tablets, etc.) in virtual desktop environment. DaaS allows remote and mobile workers to be connected at all times. This results in more employee productivity and
- Promotes green IT: Power consumption in virtual desktops is significantly low. For instance, a desktop computer may consume over 150 Watts electric power compared to virtual desktop with electricity consumption less than 20 Watts. Reduced electricity consumption reduces energy costs – overhead savings for the company. This benefit also results in low carbon foot print and emissions, thus advancing the idea of Green IT.
Virtual desktops can be implemented and scaled quickly and the issues of application compatibility with different operating environments are easily overcome. Organizations adopting DaaS are sure to benefit in terms of reduced costs in managing IT and extending their reach by making employees more mobile and responsive.