As small, medium, and enterprise-level businesses are attracted more and more towards cloud-based solutions, moving VDI to the cloud seems like an inevitable move. Till now, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) was implemented to offer security, collaboration, access, and seamless management to any business. Enterprise-level businesses thrived with this implementation due to the easy availability of resources, talent, and workforce.

However, the pandemic has created an urgency in cloud implementations. Cloud VDI solutions demonstrate strong resilience, mobility, operational efficiency, and business continuity power, which helps businesses plan for unpredicted situations. If you look at it, then the pandemic has increased cloud adoption amongst all types of businesses. By the next year, the market size of virtual desktops would reach USD 5 billion.

So, let’s analyze the demand for cloud VDI solutions for small, medium, and enterprise-level businesses in detail.
Challenges Faced By Small, Medium, and Enterprise-Level Businesses

Most enterprise-level businesses and many small and medium enterprises employ a VDI structure in-house or on-premise. These institutions are used to offering secure, uniform, and uncomplicated access to employees and vendors. The movement of sensitive data within the perimeter of the company is effortless with VDI.

However, while these virtual desktops play an essential role in the organization, issues faced during and after the setup are also unavoidable.

On-premise VDI setups are managed end-to-end by the IT team of the organization. The high-end software and hardware infrastructure paired with data center management require efforts, skills, experience, and patience. The deployment often consumes days, and upgrade/maintenance leads to more downtime.

Companies understand remote workflows now (thanks to the pandemic). On the cloud, VDI implementations are quick, cost-effective, and resource-effective. Virtual desktops can be created and offered over the Internet for remote access, and businesses use VDI functionalities throughout the organization. From scalability to ease of access, several aspects of cloud VDI are delivered as a managed service from a cloud VDI provider.

The Demand for Cloud VDI

According to Statista, the demand for desktop virtualization will increase over the next few years. Here are some reasons why,

Control and Visibility

Cloud VDI solutions empower admins to identify network configurations and other things, such as desktop, application, and user group perspectives. As a result, your IT admins can control data access across the architecture.

They can also define other factors of network or virtual desktop configurations to control the management, implementation, and upgrade of virtual desktops.

Cost-Effectiveness

The cloud VDI Provider has a server setup on which the virtual cloud desktops are hosted. This architecture is set up and managed by the service provider—companies do not set it up.

The cloud desktops and their resources are hosted on the cloud. Therefore, capitals expenses at your end are mitigated, including hardware costs, software licenses, and upgrade and maintenance charges.

Your IT team is responsible for access control management and system access (multi-factor authentication setup). The provider manages every other aspect.

Scalability

During the pandemic, many small, medium, and enterprise-level organizations have realized that scaling is not easy during a crisis.

Take the COVID-19 situation, for example. If you have on-premise VDI, scaling resources would be challenging due to restrictions of hardware purchase, low staffing, and challenging logistics.

On the cloud, scaling is possible in a few clicks. The cloud provider can scale your resources on-demand according to your business requirements.

Secure Endpoint Usage

Once you have migrated VDI to the cloud, desktop access is via a browser. Your employees or users need to open the desktop instance and utilize it online through a stable internet connection. Users can access these virtual desktops on multiple devices, such as smartphones, laptops, computers, etc.

Regardless of the type of endpoint, no data is stored on these devices. So, if a user is accessing a virtual desktop on a smartphone, the device is not really keeping the data. Unless the user takes a screenshot or stores some data manually, you can revoke access from the endpoint, which is beneficial in the case of endpoint theft or loss.

Also, most cloud providers offer end-to-end encryption, AI systems, intrusion detection, and physical security of the data centers to make it a foolproof solution.

Simpler Deployment and Setup

A benefit of cloud VDI that businesses value is simpler deployment and setup. On-premise VDIs are great but come with the hassle of implementation and setup. Fortunately, cloud VDI is hosted on the cloud and is usually an out-of-the-box solution. With simple administration and employee training, you can start using cloud VDI in a few hours or days.

Service providers ensure data backups, storage, application upgrades, endpoint management, load balancing, resource provisioning, and network troubleshooting. Therefore, the infrastructure and maintenance burden is lifted off your shoulders, and you can still expect the highest application performance after deployment.

BYOD

Enterprise-level businesses rarely allow BYOD policy because they understand data privacy on a deeper level. When the employees use personal devices in an organization, there are too many unsupervised channels, which is never acceptable due to security reasons.

With cloud VDI, BYOD policy is convenient and achievable because of the quality of security features offered. As mentioned above, no data is on the endpoint. Therefore, a cyberattack on an endpoint doesn’t put your company’s data at risk.

User Experience

Ultimately, user experience is what matters the most. If your employees cannot work without interruption or are not receiving proper tools, the user experience decreases and impacts your productivity.

Cloud VDIs offer performance and speed. Cloud VDI providers use high-performance computing servers that provide superior speed and boost efficiency.

Conclusion

For businesses of every size, finding an equilibrium between operational efficiency and technology implementation is crucial. Future disasters or similar conditions can disrupt organizational functioning and uproot the entire work pattern. Hence, becoming future-ready is the key. Fortunately, cloud VDI is the simplest, most cost-effective solution, which is why its demand is regularly increasing.

Find the right virtual desktop hosting provider, negotiate the terms of service, and host your VDI on the cloud for hassle-free working and higher ROI.

Author's Bio: 

Bhavleen is a writer at Ace Cloud Hosting – a leading virtual desktop hosting provider, with several years of experience in the cloud industry. She loves to research various technologies and has a firm grasp on topics like Accounting, ERP, VDI, and HIPAA.