5 advantages of Desktops as a Service

With desktop refresh cycles growing longer, many IT leaders (and CFOs) are hesitant to pull the trigger on major across-the-organization upgrades. At the same time, maintaining aging client systems equipment is an expensive and productivity-sapping exercise. These systems – and any system running Windows XP – are motivating people throughout the organization to look for a better way forward.

VDI can be good option, but requires specialized in-house IT skills; plus there’s an upfront capital investment required for deployment.

Desktops as a service (DaaS) may be the best fit when you need new end-user computing solutions but are conscious of cost, deployment and support challenges. VMware Horizon™ DaaS® helps reduce IT management complexity, cut costs, improves workforce productivity, and delivers an enhanced user experience by allowing employees to access corporate files, applications and services on any device, anywhere, at any time.

More and more organizations are realizing the benefits of moving away from physical desktops in favor of DaaS. While there are many compelling advantages to DaaS when compared with both physical desktops and VDI, Zones and VMware want you to be aware of five that really stand out:

Money
One of the biggest challenges for IT organizations is finishing – or even starting – the migration away from Windows XP to Windows 7 and 8. Of course, the newest versions of Windows almost always require major upgrades in client hardware. Moving to DaaS has the potential to avoid large capital expenditures. By removing or reducing a CapEx category like PC hardware costs and replacing it with operating expenses like cloud-based subscription services, an IT leader could make a CFOs day. DaaS even provides the additional incentive of helping to control operating costs by reducing the need for IT deployment resources and in-house technical support.

Speed
DaaS gives organizations the ability to provide all necessary desktops rights and resources in a matter of hours. You can forget about waiting days or months to get new employees or “as-needed” personnel up to speed with desktops. DaaS can help simplify the management of disparate infrastructure resulting from mergers and acquisitions, eliminating a major issue for strapped IT   organizations that often struggle to integrate new employees into corporate systems quickly without having to overhaul IT infrastructure. DaaS can also help software development teams set up temporary test beds for development and testing. One of the most significant areas where DaaS can mitigate deployment challenges is in disaster recovery and business continuity (DR/BC).

Mobility
Users want mobile access to applications, data and services via their own familiar consumer devices – and they want it NOW. DaaS helps ensure a consistent user experience, regardless of device format or brand, while standardizing deployment, security and support. In an era where telecommuting and remote-office computing are increasingly the norm, DaaS is an ideal solution for geographically dispersed workforces. This is particularly the case in “always-on” global industries like financial services, retail, and hospitality.

Security
No one wants to be the next to suffer a high-profile security breach. Since security breaches often take place at the edge of the network, DaaS is an attractive security option because data and applications reside in the cloud, not on end-user devices that are ripe targets because of weaker   security tools and more lax security practices of the end users themselves. Cloud-based DaaS also helps alleviate another challenge associated with BYOD by enabling a consistent set of security protocols across users’ own mobile devices, regardless of mobile operating system or hardware brand.

Staffing
Few IT organizations have bigger and more specialized staff than they did even a few years ago. And that trend isn’t likely to change. This makes it more and more difficult for the IT department to meet expectations for onboarding new users faster, more easily and at less cost. VDI was the first step in that direction. But it requires some specialized expertise from internal – and often external – IT organizations. DaaS, by contrast, doesn’t require the same level of expertise and experience as VDI deployment, cutting down on deployment and support requirements for in-house staff, and eliminating the need for expensive VDI specialists.

To explore all of the advantages DaaS can bring to your organization, contact a Zones account executive. 1-800-408-ZONES