Making the Business Case for Virtual Desktops

Virtual desktop initiatives are driven by many different roles within a company, from operations executives to IT managers to security professionals. But even if you know that implementing virtual desktops is a good decision for your organization, you still likely have to make the business case to someone before getting final approval and adoption.

The most common business cases for virtual desktops include:

• Reducing in-house infrastructure
• Tighter security
• Easier hardware management
• Better application support
• Increased employee productivity
• Staying ahead of coming trends

Here’s why these business cases are so convincing and some key points that will help make your argument stronger.

Reducing In-House Infrastructure

Reducing infrastructure demands is an appealing perk, but very much depends on how you implement the virtual desktops. In-house VDI solutions can be very expensive as they require on-staff expertise, specialized infrastructure and continuous maintenance and management. Additionally, on premise infrastructure typically needs to be updated every three to five years – and begins becoming outdated almost as soon as it’s running.

The alternative is to opt for a DaaS solution – desktop as a service. This option offers fully-managed virtual desktops using the DaaS provider’s infrastructure. This allows you to implement virtual desktops without adding, retrofitting (not a good idea) or maintaining your own infrastructure. The cost of desktops and the related infrastructure moves from CAPEX to OPEX with DaaS.

If you choose a good DaaS provider, this infrastructure is custom built from the ground up specifically to support the unique performance and storage needs of virtual desktops. Infrastructure is constantly kept up to date as DaaS providers have a vested interest in always having the most updated technology and can spread the cost of updating across multiple clients, having a much smaller (if any) financial impact on your virtual desktop initiative.

“Instead of making costly investments in large scale infrastructure that goes obsolete almost as soon as you put it in place, we go cloud and we stay cloud. It gives us access to the latest and greatest with industry experts at a price point that really can’t be beat.” — Felix Serrano, CEO of Granada Corporation

Tighter Security

No company can argue with the need for robust corporate and data security. With the mix of company-issued devices, personal devices used for work, remote employees and third party contractors common in today’s working world, security is a growing challenge – and a growing threat.

Virtual desktops present several security-focused benefits. By having all employees – from full-time to part time remote to contractors – work within an isolated virtual environment, you can be sure that data is kept in your control. Specific group controls can be quickly and easily implemented by department, use case or type of worker to further lock down unnecessary or high risk functions. When a specific contract is complete, virtual desktop access is revoked, along with access to all your company data and applications.

The isolated nature of virtual desktops also present an advantage to any organization that has employees who travel often. Because no data is ever stored on the endpoint device itself, data is protected in instances when laptops, tablets or phones are lost or stolen.

System updates are another major vulnerability. Updates can be time consuming and reduce productivity, making them a headache for both users and IT – which means devices often go un-updated, leaving them vulnerable. Virtual desktops help with this issue as well. Security patches and system updates can be easily pushed to all users simply by updating the relevant golden images. No need to touch each individual device or rely on users to install critical updates.

Easier Hardware Management

Hardware management is another time suck for IT teams. While IT expertise is better spent on business critical work, IT team members are often stuck managing and provisioning computers. Virtual desktops streamline this process, making it easy to push an already customized desktop to a new user’s hardware. To further get out of the hardware management business, virtual desktops provide a secure way for companies to embrace BYOD (bring your own device) programs.

Virtual desktops also open up possibilities for endpoints. If you company isn’t ready to adopt BYOD it can still save on endpoints by using virtual desktops with cheaper computer solutions, such as Chromebooks, thin or zero clients and even existing legacy hardware.

Better Application Support

Choosing a new piece of software or application is not a light-hearted task for many organizations. Before settling on the right solution, applications are thoroughly vetted and then often in place for years. Virtual desktops allow these carefully chosen applications to remain in use even as the endpoint matrix expands or operating system support phases out.

Application compatibility is not an issue with virtual desktops because you can institute virtual app streaming or ensure desktops are using a proper operating system version for compatibility, regardless of the hardware the desktop is running on.

Increased Employee Productivity

From needing to get work done on the evenings or weekends, to not being able to get into the office because of weather, sickness or home needs (either planned or unexpectedly), there are many times outside the office employees could be working. Virtual desktops mean employees don’t need to be in the office or even have a company-issued laptop with them. They can access their virtual desktops – with all the applications, data and files they need – from any device with an internet connection. Virtual desktops give employees the ability to work securely anywhere, anytime, from any device.

This feature also comes in handy if an employee’s everyday device encounters technical problems that need repair or IT intervention to resolve. Instead of waiting idly for their computer, employees can simply log into their virtual desktop from a different device and pick up exactly where they left off, with the same files and desktop configuration they’re used to.

Staying Ahead of Coming Trends

For organizations that place emphasis on innovation and staying ahead of rising trends, virtual desktops are a natural transition right now. Cloud adoption is growing as companies realize the convenience these untethered solutions provide and realize that cloud solutions are just as secure – if not more secure – than on premise installations. Cloud desktops are the next natural step of cloud adoption, allowing organizations to tie all their cloud solutions together in a centralized, cloud-based access point.

The security benefits of virtual desktops also help organizations address the growing data security threat. While data security has been a hot topic for many years, it’s now getting to a point where organizations can no longer afford to ignore it. The past two years have been record setting years for the number of reported data breaches, the average mitigation cost of a breach is now $4 million and more than 50% of people say they would switch service providers if they feel like their data is at risk. Virtual desktops help organizations keep data more secure, putting them in a good position to face this growing threat head on.

Another quickly rising trend that virtual desktops are an ideal solution for is the shift to remote working. The number of people who work from home at least occasionally grew from 9% in 1995 to 37% in 2015; and by 2020 more than 50% of the workforce is anticipated to be remote. With a large portion of the future workforce outside of the office, companies will need a way to deliver a secure, consistent, optimized desktop environment to employees regardless of location and a simple, centralized way for IT to manage those desktops. Waiting until that point to vet and institute a solution will be too late. The companies that are poised to weather this major workforce shift and come out on top are already adopting the necessary solutions to address the change.

Choosing Your Business Case

The most effective way to convincingly argue for moving to virtual desktops is to understand your company’s unique needs and the benefits that are most likely to resonate with whoever you need to convince. IT staff may be most interested in the increased security and decreased infrastructure and hardware maintenance while an operations executive will likely be interested in keeping up with shifting trends and better application support.

Choose your use cases and business reasons carefully and craft a well-researched, well-reasoned argument in order to have the most success convincing key stakeholders that virtual desktops are a worthwhile investment.

Want the Dizzion team’s expert input on building your business case? We’re happy to help!

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