VDI News Roundup: Week of August 21

In case you didn’t have time to keep up with this week’s virtual desktop headlines, here are a few of our favorites for the week of August 21, 2017.

5 Questions to Ask as You Compare VDI vs. DaaS

Tech Target shared insights from Mark Lockwood, research director at Gartner, to help teams debating between in-house VDI and outsourced DaaS understand the fit and benefits of each approach. The questions are fairly high level, but will give people just starting their research a good understanding the strengths and weaknesses of VDI and DaaS. Mark and Tech Target dive into these questions:

1. What are my goals?
2. What are my use cases?
3. Where are my users?
4. Where is my data?
5. What is the cost?

I’d add that teams debating between VDI and DaaS also need to ask themselves “What are my internal resources?” Opting for VDI will require significantly more expertise and resources than outsourcing with a DaaS provider that comes with virtual desktop expertise and purpose-built infrastructure.

Favorite quote:

DaaS providers with multiple data centers allow users to connect to the cloud that’s closest to their physical location. That’s why DaaS is better than VDI when users are distributed far and wide, Lockwood said.

Read the full article >>

Learn more about Building vs. Buying >>

Take a Walk Down the VDI Image Management Tightrope

Golden Image bloat is a real risk when running your virtual desktop program. As this article in Tech Target highlights, it’s easy to find yourself creating a custom golden image for each and every use case that might come up. One of the particular drivers behind this scope creep are the unique applications different teams and end users need. The way to avoid this is to turn to app streaming and app layering instead of creating another golden image.

Favorite quote:

It is, however, a fine line between the utopia of a single, locked down, optimized golden image and the horrors of multiple golden images based on a mixture of operational needs, departmental differences and siloed teams. Throw in the occasional new business acquisition or OS upgrade, and everything can spiral into chaos with one false step.

Read the full article >>

Curious about app streaming vs. full virtual desktops? Learn more >>

VDI in Government: Balancing Security and Performance

Virtual desktops have seen increasing adoption across many industries in recent years, including in the government and public sector. As this article points out, the government isn’t immune to the BYOD wave and the increasing “always on” nature of today’s culture means that government workers need secure access to data wherever, whenever. As a result, VDI is gaining traction as a viable solution – as long as implementation teams understand the unique security and performance requirements needed to support effective virtual desktops.

Favorite quote:

The public sector’s growing interest in VDI is apparent: 66% of government organizations admitted that the number of virtual desktops in their infrastructure has increased over the last three years.

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Predicting When Our Desktops and Applications Will Move to the Cloud

The folks over at Brian Madden have been keeping a keen eye on the virtual desktop world for longer than most, so they’re uniquely positioned to make predictions about when cloud adoption will tip. They’re also a bit more cautious when declaring “THIS is the year of desktop virtualization” than people who are just now jumping on the bandwagon. So what do they think? Well, Gabe Knuth thinks we’re still a few years out from mass adoption and that we need to see more apps moving to the cloud before the majority of desktops will follow.

Favorite quote:

As you move certain datacenter-based workloads to the cloud, there will come a time when the applications you use to access those workloads will suffer from the same geography puzzle.

While Gabe thinks it may be awhile until we see desktops moving to the cloud on a large scale, early adopters are certainly already making the move. Companies adopting a cloud-first or cloud-only approach may want to make the transition sooner than later to keep propelling their programs forward.

Read the full article >>