The “as a service” technology industry has been growing rapidly over the past few years. Being able to buy a service-based solution has given organizations the much needed option of outsourcing tasks that are too large, complicated or expensive to handle in-house or simply not a business priority worth focusing on when there’s a simpler option.
This space represents a wide range of needs, from giving teams a simple base to build off of to fully managed outsourced solutions. While this range of options is good in the sense that “as a service” solutions can fit just about any level of need, it can cause confusion for businesses trying to decide what exactly they need and the value each level of service provides.
To help clarify the issue, we broke down some of the more popular as a service solutions on the market today, in the specific light of implementing virtual desktops. We looked at:
When researching virtual desktop solutions, you’re likely to run into all of these options, so it’s important to fully understand what each option provides, what’s left to do in house and how well the service fits the criteria of being an appropriate solution for your desktop virtualization.
This model includes the physical hardware, software, data center and hosted network components. The software includes a hypervisor and typically a portal which presents part of the physical hardware as virtual resources. Users pay for the right to use these virtual resources and can do whatever they want with it. For example, you can build an environment to host a website, support internal IT systems or create an environment for virtual desktops. IaaS is a flexible model that requires the user to roll up their sleeves and do a lot of the work themselves.
Things to consider:
Who is this good for?
This model is the hardest to define. Although there are other examples, PaaS is commonly geared toward developers. PaaS includes the infrastructure layer and moves “up the stack” to provide additional services such as required middleware to develop and run your environment. Middleware can include development languages and dependencies, and database services – all ready to go out of the box. This results in a framework, or “platform,” in which you can build, run and maintain your own application.
Who is this good for?
SaaS is defined as a cloud delivered application. The user does not have to develop the application or install the application locally on every desktop PC or laptop – the application is available to everyone with an internet connection and credentials to login. The user is responsible for items such as managing the application, user access to the application, configuration settings and any integration into other environments. The service provider manages the back-end responsibilities like data storage, adding new features and functions, and upgrades and updates.
Things to consider:
Who is this good for?
Parallels can be drawn from IaaS to VDI. VDI is usually deployed on infrastructure that was specifically designed for virtual desktops, however the user again has to roll up their sleeves and do a lot – or even all – of the work themselves.
A VDI service integrator may do the work of setting up the environment, but the user has the on-going task of managing it. However, it’s also common for organizations to implement in-house VDI without the use of a service. If your company decides to build VDI entirely in-house, you’re responsible for the entire system from start to finish, including selecting the hardware and implementing the infrastructure.
Things to consider:
Who is this good for?
Similar to SaaS, DaaS also delivers a cloud application, in this case, the application is a desktop. DaaS is your full service option, a fully managed desktop that is securely delivered over the internet.
There are a lot of components (firewalls, connection brokers, authentication servers) that are required before a desktop can be delivered to an end user. In this model, the service provider builds, configures (performance tunes), and maintains the entire environment. In some instances, the service provider also handles desktop-related compliance requirements.
Things to consider:
Who is this good for?
There are of course many considerations when evaluating which “as-a-service” offering is right for your needs. This high level overview should help you narrow your focus and better understand which platforms to evaluate, and which to leave for another project.
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