5 Major Advantages You Can Harness With VDI
Does your IT keep your staff stuck in the office?
Traditional office environments typically consist of desktop computers connected by physical network cabling. Employees often save data on their local hard drives, and these solutions only work as long as the employees are working in the office.
When employees travel or work from home, they access data using virtual private networks and remote desktop software. Here’s the problem: connections can be spotty, and centralized network storage is difficult to access.
There’s a better way—virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions, which are more cost-effective and improve productivity. Do you know what they offer your business?
What Is VDI?
This technology is used to create a virtualized desktop by separating the operating system from the hardware using a specialized virtual machine called a hypervisor. Users are then able to access operating systems like Windows remotely from any of their devices through a connection broker.
Each virtual machine, or desktop, can be configured for the individual user. Essentially, this offers users the freedom to access their desktop and software suite from any location, at any time, versus being required to log onto a physical computer.
Any organization that wants employees to be able to connect to a remote desktop on various devices from locations should use a virtual desktop infrastructure.
VDI’s Greatest Strength: Anywhere, Anytime Access
The core benefit of VDI solutions is that they allow you, your staff, and other authorized users to access your data, your applications, and the rest of your work environment from any device.
This is a key capability in the modern age of remote work. Even before the pandemic, remote work was becoming more common, and now it’s become the norm.
Remote work is no longer a “short-term arrangement”. However you’ve managed remote work so far, if it’s to be a part of your long-term vision for your organization, then you need to make sure it’s optimized and secure.
The COVID-19 pandemic will conclude at some point, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be done with remote work, right?
On one hand, you could choose to continue with remote work after it’s safe to return to the office. You wouldn’t be alone in that decision—according to 317 CFOs recently surveyed by Gartner, 74% say they expect to move previously on-site employees remote after the pandemic.
Remote working capability is dependent on the implementation of a comprehensive strategy for cloud services delivery. Remote workers need to be able to do their work, and easily. Any obstacles will prevent them from staying productive.
If they’re fighting against unintuitive software, a bad connection, or anything else tech-related, their standard workday won’t be all that productive. It won’t be long before your firm’s productivity grinds to a halt.
That’s why the right remote access solution is so important—the Mathe team recommends VDI because it is an undeniably robust and feature-rich cloud platform for you and your team to work from, no matter where you are.
VDI Offers A Range of Benefits…
- VDI Is Low Cost: Cloud-based virtual desktops use the same cloud-based infrastructure that application hosts use for SaaS applications or cloud-based data storage. Cloud platform providers purchase and maintain the hardware necessary to serve and host applications and virtual desktops and charge customers by the amount of storage and services they use. These services are offered as a subscription on a monthly or quarterly basis, vastly reducing the cost to you when compared to managing similar resources independently.
- VDI Is Scalable and Flexible: The cost of cloud-based VDI depends on the number of users and the amount of storage your applications need. These requirements change based on business activity, economic factors, or even season. A cloud-based VDI vendor allocates storage based on their clients’ needs and reallocates capacity as needed. This makes it easy to scale up or down without having to purchase new hardware that may go to waste later on.
- VDI Delivers Greater Storage Space: Cloud-based desktops are managed by global technology providers who can allocate storage space at a moment’s notice. Your IT department will not have to go out and buy new storage devices every time you hire a new employee or add a software application to your desktop environment. Storage needs can vary based on the applications, the number of users and the number of data files.
- VDI Offers Business Continuity Protection: Cloud-based virtual desktops store data and applications in a well-protected environment making them more likely to provide continuous business operations. Cloud providers can provide on-demand backup services and disaster recovery plans to keep the business running in a natural emergency or business-related interruption.
Mathe Delivers VDI Expertise
Our team can provide your staff with a robust VDI platform that will help increase your efficiency and productivity, without having to risk your data. By managing your VDI environment, we will:
- Work with you to assess, design, implement and support cloud computing while reducing IT capital costs and increasing employee productivity.
- Define business and technology requirements before we recommend a cloud strategy. Our team will work with your business and IT leaders to help compare costs over time and determine what role cloud computing should play in your plans.
- Assess the business value and business impact before presenting you with a customized cloud strategy.
Talk to our technicians about our VDI services and how they will benefit your organization.
Thanks to our colleagues at GenerationIX in Los Angeles for their help with this article.
With over 35 years in the business of supporting and implementing technology for the SME market, and 6 years previously in Corporate IT and Voice. I have seen a great deal of change. The only common thread is I have always focused on the Business Wise application of Technology. We always try to look 5 years ahead of the current technology to make sure our clients are on the right track to meet current and future needs.
