With remote workplaces increasing and organisations forced to look at hybrid working environments, executives and business owners alike are looking at ways to ensure greater productivity from their remote employees; leveraging modern technologies to match or outperform that of traditional workplaces. This is where traditional IT infrastructure can inhibit productivity, making way for the year of the virtual desktop. The revamp of Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop comes into full swing providing scalability, accessibility and security for workers who can be placed all over the globe. Virtual infrastructure provides a secure and cost-effective way to manage remote workforces or provide additional security within traditional environments.
According to an article from Secret Double Octopus, “A virtual desktop is an operating system and accompanying applications that are hosted on a server and made accessible to an endpoint – typically a remote endpoint – as if it was running locally on the endpoint.” In short, it is a desktop in the cloud that runs like a computer in your office. You can connect via any device be it a desktop, laptop, mobile or just via a web browser.
But how can Virtual Desktop Infrastructure help you address efficiency and security?
Flexibility, productivity, and business continuity
With Windows Virtual Desktop your employees can access files, software, and applications they need wherever they are. With this capability, your team can continue working if unforeseeable outages occur just move to another device and connect. In addition, data loss poses as a significant issue with small businesses, now with WVD you can easily back-up and restore works that are in progress by reducing the possibility of losing that critical data. Due to an almost infinite scalable pool of resources, applications can run faster than with traditional hardware. As systems, data and software are managed centrally, it provides a more fluid and simplistic way of updating applications, providing, and maintaining security controls, and reducing the impact of hardware failures. Maintenance tasks and support incidents are all resolved remotely reducing the impact and costs around you, saving critical time and reducing overall operating expenses.
Cost savings
Pooling resources into a single host allows for significant costs savings ensuring that only the required resources are utilised reducing any unused buffer (this unused buffer always comes at a cost). Virtual desktop infrastructure has significant advantages with virtual and central management and lessening the cost of expensive installations and updates. This in turn also lowers hardware and physical infrastructure requirements and costs since your staff will be working virtually. You can avoid high capital expenditures with expensive servers since you can also rely on cloud storage services and spread the high capital expenditure out as an operating expense as a monthly cost. With your team working on their own devices but the power of their system coming from the cloud infrastructure, this then requires minimal power within the client machines utilising less RAM, storage space and overall computing power.
Security
With your operating system, software and applications centralised, you you have greater control over access control and secure sensitive data and files. Data and sensitive information are stored within company managed cloud infrastructure and not on the device. With most applications nowadays, all data is encrypted so even if they are in the cloud, only members with granted permission can access them. With organisations working remotely or at least within a hybrid environment, personal devices cannot be trusted with company data. Organisations fail to manage and secure personal devices without imposing on the employees’ privacy. Virtual desktops allow organisations to provide the security and controls required for remote workplaces without the intrusion on employees’ personal devices. It becomes a significant win for both parties.
With these wide range of benefits that virtual desktop infrastructure can provide for your business, it is not just an immediate solution to a security or remote workforce need but a long-term investment and a scalable solution. It can adapt to your specific business needs and can help you focus more on revenue turning activities ensuring your staff are working at their most secure and productive.
Interested in setting up a virtual desktop for your business? Plex IT can help you with that. Contact us at [email protected] for more information.
