With the rising need for virtual office spaces arose the notion of virtual desktops for doing business. Provided below is an overview of several reasons why virtual desktop interfaces (VDIs) are something worth considering.
Flexibility
Whether you have a preferred machine or your own or require a GPU virtual desktop, you can host virtually, meaning that everyone can access them regardless of where they are in the real world. This means that you can gain a significant amount of flexibility within your company. No matter how you specifically approach a virtual desktop, flexibility is vital, allowing you to host desktops and apps in the cloud.
It Cuts Cost
VDIs often come with pretty low-intensity costs if you have an existing server. This means that you can garner a huge amount of savings down the line and that virtualizing your desktop is more influential on your bottom line than just the upfront cost. In short, you are gaining a positive investment that could yield drastic returns.
Notably, you need fewer current desktops equipped to run the relevant software and licenses. Even upgrades and maintenance, significant concerns for IT departments, are greatly diminished because they can do all of their checks from a centralized area. One company estimates that virtual apps can save a large organization nearly $2 million.
Dynamic Updating
As an organization grows, its computer options diversify. Creatives favor Apple screens, IT professionals prefer PCs, Managers favor laptops for their portability, and mobile devices are vital for mobile ops. The big issue with all of these variations is that they all involve different OSs and versions of apps.
Updating multiple types of devices with traditional maintenance and drastic upgrades can be cumbersome. You may have the same software but it might not work equally well on all fronts. Virtual desktops circumvent this issue, serving as a centralized means of updating everything at once; rather than force employees to sign in just to ensure that their OS is fully updated, you just need to perform a single upgrade and everyone’s devices can install it at their leisure.
Greater Security
Another concern of growing organizations is the vulnerability that their systems have to be compromised. When even one cyber attack can harm a business for over $2 million, preventative measures are never optional to be successful.
A virtual environment is vital to making a business secure. Storing data on a VDI means that it keeps on a central system, which can more easily be safeguarded than individual employees’ devices. With everything centralized, you can set the rules that keep data where it should be.
Superior Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery is a sibling to cybersecurity in that both are vital to IT management. When over half of all businesses that experience a disaster and lack a recovery plan never manage to recover, you owe your organization to keep it away from that demographic. While virtualization is not the sole step of operations, it is a crucial one. It means you can ignore stationary computers that might be physically damaged because all of the data is stored and regularly backed up in a central location. Even when disaster recovery procedures are initiated, you can access data to shrink downtime and damages.
Geo-Replication
Geo-Replication is the process of making parallel databases in various global regions and further resists data loss. Geo-replication comes into play when you need to secure the central data storage unit.
Centralized Troubleshooting
Normally, when an employee has a software issue, they send a ticket, which means an IT call, and a localized solution. At best, you might get an analysis of whether the same problem exists locally and receive a localized solution for it. Consider of work needed to handle all of that, then realize that a global solution may not be easily or urgently received, causing multiple tickets to pile up. With a VDI, troubleshooting only happens once per issue, fixing problems for everyone in one go.
Conclusion
At their most basic, VDIs mean greater productivity. Operations become leaner and fitter, while employees can enjoy greater flexibility. You can maintain productivity during a disaster and your data is more resistant to breaches. Lastly, you can take the long-term savings in your costs and put them back into the businesses for superior operations.