Mobility and Flexibility – The Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Boon

Introduction:

The modern workplace is changing. The widespread consumer adoption and embracement of mobility (smart phones and tablets), has pushed its way into the business world too. With the rise of this new technology, the office is now at home, on the train, at the airport and in the coffee shop across the road. It can be anywhere that always on, always connected workers happen to be when they’re hooked up to their mobile device. This new era of mobility can bring a wealth of benefits and raise your workforce productivity.

The iPhones and Blackberrys have liberated business travelers in terms of mail and calendars, but what if it went a step further and let them access their personal desktop “from the cloud” using a mobile device? What if they could access every one of desktop applications from anywhere anytime with any device?

The Challenge

All these promises bring with them their own challenges like supporting multiple devices, multiple platforms through multiple protocols, compliance and data security. Of course locking down company data and applications is paramount particularly when most of your precious IP is right out there with your mobile workers.  Supporting mobility and device flexibility with current IT setup can pose huge challenges.

Although mobility has long kept IT managers awake at night, a significant transformation is happening in businesses where the benefits of leveraging mobile technology far outweigh the downside. Furthermore, the major stumbling blocks of security and lack of available robust business apps are simply and efficiently overcome with a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).

VDI brings mobility and flexibility at lower costs

VDI allows you to access your complete personal PC desktop experience from anywhere, using any device, including iPads, netbooks, tablets and other mobile devices as well as your existing desktops, laptops and thin clients. You can access both Microsoft Windows and Linux-based operating system desktops – it doesn’t matter and you can even run the virtual desktops without connectivity, seamlessly by way of a USB drive.

But mobility is just one of the many benefits of VDI that small and medium-sized business can leverage. Fewer desktop problems and more efficient centralized support mean fewer IT headaches and lower support costs (Desktop Management costs 10 times more than the cost of purchase).

Storing data centrally rather than on individual devices is simply best practice but something that is hard to enforce in a normal desktop environment. Improved security – you can cope much better if it’s just the device that goes missing – not everything on it. With VDI, any operating system upgrade will take place at a server level rather than the desktop/laptop level, which means that a business could quite easily upgrade all its VDI users without physically touching every laptop or desktop. VDI is a real and cost effective alternative to refreshing PCs.

With VDI you are not only reducing the costs of managing IT, but you are expanding the reach of your organization by making your employees more mobile and responsive.

VDI is the essence of a flexible workplace. You can have workers tapping in from home, your sales team out on the road and your teams in remote branches around the world.

Tags: Desktop Virtualization, Mobility, VDI

	Author: Sandeep Boda Services Marketing Manager - Cloud Computing
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