CEOs: 4 Quick Things to Know About Virtual Desktops

For mid-sized and smaller companies, final purchase approval for new IT solutions may fall to the CEO. If you don’t have a tech-heavy background, haven’t been involved in the vetting process or simply don’t have time to really dig into the solution, making a final decision about implementing virtual desktops may seem daunting. Your IT team has already vetted the technology side of the solution, but is it the right business decision?

To help you understand this virtualization solution a little better (without spending a lot of time on the topic), here are a few key ways virtual desktops help businesses.

1. Less Hardware Cost

One of the big appeals of cloud solutions is the opportunity to stop supporting your own on premise infrastructure (which takes a lot of time, resources and budget). Desktop as a service (DaaS) is an outsourced version of desktop virtualization which means someone else is responsible for purchasing, configuring, maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure. This shift from CAPEX to OPEX can represent a major cost savings for organizations.

Virtual desktops can also extend the life of existing laptops, make BYOD (bring your own device) practices much more secure, or let companies adopt more affordable, low-energy thin client endpoints instead of full-fledged computers.

2. Better for IT

Your IT department probably already explained how virtual desktops will help them be more efficient and effective, but here are a few highlights:

• Less time spent maintaining infrastructure like servers
• Quicker provisioning of new devices – meaning faster time to productivity for new employees
• Faster trouble shooting (with the right insights and ability to quickly re-provision desktops)
• Overall, less time spent on mundane tasks and more time to focus on business driving initiatives

3. Scales with Your Organization

Organizational growth is an important metric, but keeping up with personnel growth can be easier said than done. Not only do you need to find the right people, you have to onboard those people and provision them with a computer and the required applications.

Virtual desktops makes that as easy as “copying” an existing desktop “blueprint” that’s already set up with all the apps and security controls the new employee will need. Your IT team doesn’t need to manually rebuild everything on every computer for every user, it’s all ready to go, you essentially just have to hit “launch.” (Disclaimer: this is an extremely simple, non-technical explanation of how virtual desktops work. For a more in depth explanation, ask your head of IT or chat with a Dizzion virtualization expert.)

For organizations that experience a lot of seasonal demand (contact centers, retailers, hospitality, education, etc.), you can spin desktops up and down as needed instead of investing in a lot of hardware that sits around unused for part of the year.

4. You Can Get Business Insights

Your IT team is probably excited about the technology behind this solution and everything it’s going to let them do, but CEOs will be most excited about the data and insights virtual desktops can surface. Every employee at your company uses a desktop … that’s a lot of information that’s being gathered every day. Imagine having access to data that tells you:

• If employees (or contractors) are actively working or sitting idle
• When exactly your business trends up or down every year (are you hiring additional staff too early?)
• Are expensive applications being used or is that a potential cost savings area?

The Dizzion Control Center offers a lot of helpful monitoring and management features for IT teams, but it also gathers deep business insights to help organizations make data-driven decisions that reach much further than a simple technology solution. Now that’s something CEOs can get excited about.