What’s driving DaaS?

By David Barclay, National Practice Manager, Data^#3 Limited

[Reading time: 2 mins]

Desktop as a Service, or DaaS, is essentially Cloud delivered virtual desktops. It has emerged to pick up the virtual desktop baton and is now growing strongly. Is this growth just a result of the growing trust in Cloud solutions and what some see as the inevitable shift of everything to the Cloud, or is there another more business aligned driver at play?

THE RISE OF MOBILITY

In our view, the demand for virtualised desktops is still primarily driven by a need to reduce the complexity and cost of managing the end user computing experience and that hasn’t changed, especially for large organisations.

However, we are now seeing more and more companies allowing or enabling their staff to embrace ‘The Anywhere Workplace’ and work in remote capacities. This may be may be due to a greater reliance on contractors, work-from-home arrangements or the productivity benefits of a truly mobile workforce. Whatever the reason, it’s a use case that a traditional approach can’t handle.

A DaaS solution on the other hand enables the full desktop experience for ANY worker, with maximum performance and functionality, on almost any device. This is particularly important when mobile apps aren’t available or sufficiently developed to deliver the functionality a remote user needs.

Even if your workforce isn’t mobile, there are still a number of reasons that businesses are choosing DaaS including:

• deployment flexibility
• faster deployment time and lower IT oversight requirements
• ability to test new software before a wider rollout
• broad device support across multiple form factors
• reduced capital investment

DO VIRTUAL DESKTOPS STILL HAVE A ROLE TO PLAY?

VDI is the technology unpinning DaaS so, yes, VDI is still important.  The more accurate question to ask is whether an on-premises VDI solution still has a role to play?

The answer is closely related to the normal decisions around moving any workload or service to the Cloud. Do you have specific performance, latency, security or regulatory requirements that prevent you moving services to the Cloud?  If so, those same requirements could mean a VDI solution may be better suited.

However, it is no longer an “either/or” situation. VMware’s Horizon Air solution for example allows you to build a hybrid environment, meaning you run DaaS internally through a Private Cloud model for total control and security, but also externally through Horizon Air to remote or field based workers. Both services are still managed through a single pane of glass and deliver all the benefits of a typical Public Cloud-based DaaS solution.

With VMware’s patented Hybrid Cloud brokering technology, you can also extend your network into the service provider’s Cloud allowing DaaS users to easily access on-premises network resources such as file servers (if they still exist) and printers.

With this in mind, it’s not hard to see why DaaS is picking up where on-premises VDI left off. It delivers on all the promises that virtualised desktops brought to the table, but with much greater flexibility and capacity to create the ideal combination of desktops, shared desktops and hosted applications for any type of worker. It really is ‘Your Cloud, Your Way’.