The Pandemic Effects on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

The Pandemic (COVID-19) has affected every industry in the market. However, when we talk about VDI & DaaS services, there is a significant growth in its adoption because of the unwarranted requirement of moving the entire business process to remote working.

People & industry experts are talking about this technology more than before. Due to virtual desktop benefits & remote working environment, SMB’s are keener towards implementing VDI infrastructure for future-proof business.

To know more technically how pandemic has impacted VDI, we at Ace Cloud Hosting reached out to David York Smith to understand it better.

David York Smith is a Lead Virtualization Engineer and has expertise in Public & Private Cloud, VMware Infrastructure, VDI & Microsoft Windows. He also owns various documentation & certifications related to his technical subjects.

He studied at the University of California, Berkeley. Some of his success stories include being a part of the team that received a commendation from the United States President to Optimizing infrastructure & administering direct user support.

Let’s find out what he said.

Delivering business standardized desktops and laptops to end-users is a perennial IT challenge. Each of those devices requires constant maintenance and support so that end users can remain productive and secure. This involves support staff, hardware, and software purchases that take time and continuous effort to maintain.

DaaS allows us to do all of this on an as-needed basis without acquiring new hardware at the user level. DaaS also enables businesses to rapidly shift away from old models of service delivery to end-users. I would much instead deliver 200 VDI sessions to users than 200 physical laptops. It is simple, one path takes minutes, and the other can take days or weeks.

DaaS/VDI capability and pricing have improved a great deal, and this has only accelerated because of the rise of the Cloud service providers. Due to the Covid-19 crisis, many businesses have had to rapidly shift their office-based operations towards the unthinkable -remote work.

Thanks to DaaS, companies can provision and de-provision desktops with standard application sets on an as-needed basis within minutes rather than hours or days. This flexibility and speed of service delivery provide an excellent opportunity for DaaS in our post-Covid-19 world. Appropriately used, DaaS can reduce the hardware ownership and support staff required to support those remote workers.

Once the COVID-19 crisis hit, I began seeing an even brighter future for Daas/VDI because of the overnight need for millions of people to need to telecommute suddenly. Imagine a call center. Do they all need to sit in a large office together?

Those who provide Daas/VDI related services would do well to understand their customers’ specific needs and what is likely to be their future challenges. In this way, the flexibility and speed of delivery that DaaS offers can be very enticing. What are the main pain points that result from a sudden shift to remote work from home situations? Finding and answering such questions will no doubt lead to sales.

The Future of VDI Post COVID-19

People & industries are still recovering from the pandemic effects & it would be too early to comment about the future of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) after COVID. Nevertheless, we see a higher trend towards VDI & DaaS deployment. According to WHO reports, the countries that are most impacted by the pandemic are the USA, India, Brazil & Russia. Hence, it will take time for industries to recover fully.

VDI technology and Desktop as a Service(DaaS) plays a role in defining the market by flexibly delivering apps & services to the end-user. Hosted virtual desktop(HVD) has many benefits during this challenging time. It provides us with all the data we want from anywhere hosted in the cloud & provides an extra layer of security with all the restrictions & access authority maintained in one place.

We can say that VDI is positively impacted by COVID-19 & provides companies to build future-proof digital workspace for the end-users. Still, a lot is happening in the VDI market & we will see some more advancement in the virtualization field post-COVID-19. Some of the lead industry brands like VMware & Citrix define the market with their technologies; it wouldn’t be a surprise to see some new era of VDI shortly.