VDI, A desktop alternative growing in demand

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is common terminology for anyone who has managed and dealt with IT infrastructure, as a desktop alternative it is commonly found to be used by remote workers.

VDI moves users from hosting their workloads on a user PC to a server within a data centre. Moving away from the standard process of managing a desktop portfolio can enable many benefits to an organisation which are not attainable if a standard desktop solution is deployed.

Since the emergence of cloud services has risen in success, it has gained recognition as a modern alternative over previous IT legacies. Many IT infrastructure solutions have developed and evolved to be able to function and be managed through the cloud. Using the cloud for infrastructure offers a lot more opportunity for VDI to be scalable, it can also reduce the necessity for hardware and servers to be used in an environment to host the desktop.

The many critics of VDI were it was not capable of high performance compared to a desktop working with a standard operating system, in more recent times, the performance of VDI has been developed and is now on par. When organisations deploy a VDI infrastructure this tends to go hand in hand with a Managed Service provider to support and manage VDI. A Managed Service team can give suggestions on how VDI can further improve a business as a digital workspace solution. They will always ensure that the VDI is working at its highest efficiency.

VDI comes with minimal risk to the security of the device that the infrastructure is managed on, VDI is centralized controlled. What this means in terms of security is that any organisation data that is not stored locally on the device is stored in the cloud in a centralized location. This is a good thing because a company’s IT team or MSP can take control of the device whether something is required to be fixed or in the case it has been stolen. In current times of a pandemic, this is very effective for remote workers and brings forward a new way that desktops can be managed accordingly.

Many businesses find themselves going through a digital transformation which enables more effective remote working due to the ongoing pandemic. A digital transformation strategy which includes VDI can encourage employees to work efficiently by providing them with the tools they need. Remotely accessible desktops such as VDI take away the issues which sometimes arise with old IT legacy systems. In the future, it will continue to grow as a favourable desktop solution with its ease of use compared to previous VDI that was of the past.