How virtual desktop infrastructure supports business agility
The rise in remote work has accelerated the adoption of virtual desktops that allow employees to access their desktop and applications from anywhere and on any device. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) refers to an IT solution that enables organizations to create these virtualized desktop environments on a central server. When properly implemented and optimized, VDI can significantly enhance an organization’s adaptability and efficiency.
While VDI isn’t new, it remains an effective way to facilitate remote and hybrid work, alleviating IT teams from infrastructure management and scaling challenges. Moreover, its relevance is only increasing: The global market for VDI is expected to grow more than 18% from 2024 to 2031.
By leveraging VDI’s scalability and flexibility, IT and business leaders can enhance their organization’s agility, positioning them to streamline IT operations and support a distributed workforce.
How does virtual desktop infrastructure work?
A clear understanding of VDI components is crucial for making informed decisions about hardware and software investments, optimizing performance, and ensuring efficient deployment and management of solutions.
At a high level, the key components of VDI include:
- Hypervisor: This layer of software allows multiple virtual computers to run on a single physical computer, allocating resources to each virtual machine.
- Management services: Many organizations rely on tools or services for configuring, managing, and monitoring virtual desktops. This makes it easy to create new virtual desktops and maintain consistent security measures across an organization’s IT environment.
- Display protocol: This technology handles the connection between the virtual desktop on the server and the user’s device. It ensures virtual desktop screens appear clearly on users’ devices and update in real time, providing a smooth user experience.
- Physical and virtual resources: Organizations require both physical and virtual resources to support virtual desktops, including sufficient storage solutions, reliable network systems, and servers with adequate bandwidth.
VDI centralizes your organization’s desktop management, simplifying the deployment, updating, and management of software across the organization. As a result, you can boost operational agility and efficiency.
4 ways virtual desktop infrastructure drives business agility
Business agility plays a crucial role in your organization’s ability to adapt to market changes, ensure customer satisfaction, and operate more cost effectively. VDI can help you increase your operational agility in the following ways:
1. Enhanced remote access
VDI enables employees to securely access their work desktops from anywhere and on any device, without the need for virtual private networks (VPNs), which can be difficult to set up, often introducing latency and bandwidth challenges. This is a critical functionality if you operate in a hybrid or remote work model, or even when employees work from different office locations.
Additionally, if you onboard a new employee but can’t provide them with a company device right away, they can safely use their own device that’s connected to the enterprise network through VDI. The security and flexibility offered by VDI supports greater employee collaboration, leading to faster decision-making and enhanced productivity.
2. Streamlined infrastructure management
VDI allows your IT department to centrally perform software updates, security patches, and other routine maintenance tasks. By performing these actions at once and applying them simultaneously across your organization’s desktops, you can significantly reduce downtime and equip users with the latest versions of software and tools.
Centralizing these IT functions also makes it easier to scale resources up or down depending on business needs. Remote infrastructure management supports this scalability by enabling continuous monitoring and proactive maintenance of underlying IT systems, ensuring optimal performance and availability.
3. Faster development cycles
Eliminating the need to install and update software on individual devices frees up time and resources for your IT team to focus on innovation and strategic initiatives. And with the ability to roll out new resources and applications from a centralized source, employees across your organization can leverage new tools and features without delay. This enables your business to swiftly respond to market opportunities and challenges while fostering a culture of continuous innovation.
4. Improved security and compliance
By centralizing management of access controls, security policies, and data, VDI enables stronger protection against cyber risks. Instead of storing data on individual devices that are more susceptible to risk, data is stored in a central location where IT teams can implement and maintain consistent security policies and controls. This ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive data, boosting protection while helping your organization maintain compliance with regulatory requirements.
Why Ensono is the right choice for managed virtual desktop services
The evolving landscape of remote and hybrid work demands IT environments remain both agile and secure. VDI is a robust solution that offers greater business agility through centralized desktop management, enhanced remote access, and improved security and compliance.
Ensono’s virtual desktop services help you manage the implementation and integration of your virtual environments, enabling a seamless and secure VDI deployment. Our experts help you manage your environment and automatically scale resources to meet changing demands, ensuring optimal performance and cost efficiency.
Contact us to discover how optimized VDI can transform your business operations.