6 Ideal Times to Transition to Virtual Desktops

The biggest question when roadmap planning is “what time is the right time” for any given project. Often projects are prioritized on a combination of need, difficulty and payoff or based on an impending event. While an impending event on the horizon may seem like the wrong time for a major corporate change, it can be exactly the right time to switch to virtual desktops.

There are quite a few major organizational undertakings that align beautifully with implementing desktop virtualization. Think of the shift as not another change to deal with, but a way to make the already impending event (and managing desktops afterward) easier.

Are any of these situations on the company radar or still visible in the rearview mirror? Is so, now might be a good time to move your desktops to the cloud.

A merger or acquisition is on the horizon

Mergers and acquisitions (or divestitures) can present a lot of interesting and time sensitive IT challenges. Whether you have to provision new team members with the right hardware, access and controls or have to fully integrate new-to-you locations and systems, M&As aren’t simple for IT. That makes an impending merger, acquisition or divestiture the ideal time to consider a solution that will make the process easier. Virtual desktops allow you to quickly and easily push the required software, security and controls to any user, anywhere, on any device. Getting “new” employees provisioned quickly helps the company negate any productivity drops immediately following the M&A.

These situations also create natural test groups that will allow you to vet and perfect the virtual environment before rolling it out to the rest of the organization. Controlled, phased deployments are key to a successful desktop virtualization initiative.

The company is opening new offices

Similar to the M&A use case, opening new offices means supporting new employees in different (often geographically disperse) locations. Organizations can handle this in a variety of ways, but they often result in hiring local IT teams or relying on existing IT teams to get distant offices up and running (then maintain those locations). Opening a new office will always have cost associated with it, but have you considered the time it will take for IT to provision the new location? VDI makes it as easy as pushing already built desktops to users in your new location.

A remote working initiative is launching

Potentially harder than dealing with an M&A or satellite office opening, launching a remote working program means employees aren’t centralized at all. This presents both provisioning and security challenges for IT teams. If the company wants to ship equipment to remote workers, the IT team needs to provision then mail that hardware, significantly delaying time to productivity. In BYOD (bring your own device) situations, IT has to deal with setup, compatibility and security challenges.

Launching a remote working program is the ideal time to start a virtual desktop initiative. You no longer have to ship expensive provisioned equipment to each remote employee or struggle with BOYD compatibility and security challenges. Instead, you can rely on simple-to-set-up, affordable thin clients or employee BYOD while ensuring their desktop environment is always secure (and even compliant).

Desktop virtualization that’s paired with a management portal can also make it easy to monitor remote users and troubleshoot issues that would otherwise take hours or days to resolve.

After a security incident

Following a cyberattack, data breach or accidentally mishandled data incident, organizations are typically looking for ways to increase security to prevent a future issue. Implementing virtual desktops is a good addition to these conversations.

While VDI isn’t going to stop all threats, it makes it easier for organizations to ensure every user – regardless of location, employment status or device – is working under the most current, use case-specific security and controls. Patches and updates are also quick and easy as they only need to be implemented on the Golden Image and are then pushed to all users.

Some desktop as a service providers also take handle some key elements of security for you, including antivirus, antimalware and automated vulnerability patching.

There’s a seasonal spike or scaling event coming

Every year leading up to the holiday shopping season, open enrollment healthcare time, tax season or any other industry specific season, companies scale their contact centers to meet increased demand. In the past, this relied on provisioning temporary agents with company-owned equipment (which likely sat unused for the rest of the year), ramping up business process outsourcers who have adequate security and compliance measures in place, or allowing agents to use their personally owned devices (again with compatibility and security risks).

With many major seasonal spikes only a few months away, companies are preparing for these employee increases now. Which makes it the perfect time to consider virtual desktops. VDI makes it easier to provision temporary agents with secure, company-controlled desktops. When the seasonal spike ends, simply spin those virtual desktops back down.

It’s the “end of life” of existing infrastructure and hardware

We’re seeing this right now as Windows 7 support is coming to the end of its life and companies are scrambling to find solutions that support Windows 10. This has resulted in a spike in PC sales for the first time in years – but buying new PCs just keeps organizations stuck in this hardware refresh loop.

When hardware and infrastructure reaches the end of its useful life, it’s the perfect time to take a step back and evaluate new solutions instead of doing a straight swap.  Virtual desktops – particularly outsourced virtualization via desktop as a service – gives organizations the chance to extend the life of hardware it already owns, shift infrastructure costs from CAPEX to OPEX, or invest in less costly hardware. Virtual desktops can run on more affordable thin clients and outdated PCs with insufficient computing power can be transformed into usable thin clients. Organizations that opt for DaaS no longer need to bear the entire cost of purchasing, maintaining, upgrading and replacing servers and other backend infrastructure. While desktop virtualization may not be a cost saving initiative up front, it often has productivity and cost benefits overtime when you consider the total cost of ownership.