Five Top Use Cases for Desktop as a Service

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1 Five Top Use Cases for Desktop Cloud-hosted virtual desktops are enabling IT departments to cost-effectively provision, deploy and empower users with unprecedented speed and agility. Not only can new users be productive immediately, but any user can also be provisioned with a virtual desktop that is highly secure, mobile-ready, reliable and capable of delivering a fully functional user experience for any workload. WHITE PAPER

2 It is no surprise that IT leaders are turning to cloud-hosted virtual desktops as an innovative model for accelerating user deployments. According to one survey, the global market for Desktop (DaaS) solutions will grow at a compound annual rate of 28.7% through While most IT leaders aren t quite ready to move every user and desktop to the cloud, many organizations are finding that cloud-hosted virtual desktops can be valuable in reducing costs, enhancing productivity and minimizing downtime for some of their most important use cases. This white paper examines five top use cases where cloud-hosted virtual desktops can make an immediate contribution to the bottom line. Use Case No. 1: Desktop Transformation More and more IT decision makers are seriously considering desktop transformation projects because traditional models of provisioning and supporting physical desktops is putting added pressure on costs, complexity, security and availability. Desktop transformation offers the promise of simplifying desktop management and lowering costs, while still providing users with the services they need access to corporate resources, applications and data. As technology has evolved with solutions such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and DaaS models, the possibility of utilizing a single solution to reinvent the desktop is not only becoming more appealing, it is also becoming more achievable. Cloud-hosted virtual desktops represent a path towards making desktop transformation smoothly and seamlessly. The IT organization can deliver a single workspace from the cloud that provides end users with access to all of the corporate resources they need to do their job. Cloud-hosted virtual desktops also maintain all of the benefits of a physical desktop, including the ability to be customized for each user s particular needs. What s more, users can be supported on virtually any device, from fully loaded PCs to laptops, tablets, thin clients and zero clients. The cloud simplifies the shift to a new approach to managing desktops by eliminating the upfront costs of purchasing physical infrastructure; reducing the complexity and variety of IT skills necessary to get up and running; and making it much easier to grow rapidly as applications and use cases expand. IT departments gain all of these benefits without having to sacrifice their need for security and control. 1 Global Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) Market to Growth at 28.7% CAGR Till 2018, FoxResearch Consulting, reported by Yahoo! Finance, Nov. 3, 2014 WHITE PAPER /2

3 Use Case No. 2: Temporary Workers With the ubiquity of mobility and the Internet, the workforce is changing dramatically and companies are dealing with many more workers who have a temporary or transient relationship with the organization. These include consultants, temporary workers, contract workers, freelancers and others. Experts predict that as much as 40% of the workforce will be made up of contract-only employees by the end of the decade and more than 63 million Americans will be working in a virtual or flexible role by Cloud-hosted virtual desktops provide a cost-effective way to provision and support these workers. The organization can control their security profile, while giving them access to the information and applications they need to do their jobs, during the time frames that they need access. With the right cloud-hosted environment, IT will be able to customize desktops based on different workloads, so different types of workers can be supported without compromising their user experience. Use Case No. 3: Branch Offices Supporting users in branch offices has typically been a time-consuming burden on IT departments. Many branch offices don t have experienced IT professionals on-site, so when users have problems with their devices, it is a complicated and expensive process to either fix or replace them. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) can address these challenges, but VDI requires an upfront investment in incremental infrastructure. With cloud-hosted virtual desktops, however, IT can cost-effectively improve provisioning, security and speed of deployment for branch offices, without having to worry about building a new backend infrastructure or expanding an existing one. Ongoing support becomes much simpler, as there is no need for local IT staff. Also, with the right DaaS solution, desktops can be delivered and supported from a geographic area that is close to where the users are located. This can accelerate deployments, simplify ongoing support and make it easier to manage issues around security and network bandwidth, ensuring an optimal end user experience due to reduced latency. Use Case No. 4: Temporary Workloads There are many use cases that can benefit from the features and functions of desktop virtualization, but don t last long enough to justify the investment in infrastructure required for VDI. With cloud-hosted virtual desktops, users in these environments can be provisioned with desktops simply and easily; then, when their needs disappear, IT can just turn off the service. 2 5 Ways the Workforce Will Change in 5 Years, Mashable, August 25, 2014 WHITE PAPER /3

4 This is a more cost-efficient and effective way of supporting these types of workloads than using an on-premises VDI solution. With VDI you are building, buying and provisioning infrastructure, often requiring significant upfront investment. This approach leaves you with infrastructure resources that you may or may not be able to put to good use once the deployment is over. With cloud-hosted virtual desktops you are basically paying a monthly fee and can stop paying once you no longer need to support these users/workloads. Some examples: In K-12 education, during the Common Core testing season or for enabling students to utilize solutions such as Pearson MyITLab. In test and development environments, where projects often need to be up and running quickly and with a limited lifespan. In retail, when the need to support more users, storage, bandwidth and applications can spike during the holiday season. In higher education, where students may need a desktop for a particular course and need to be able to access it from any device, including a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Use Case No. 5: Disaster Recovery Cloud-hosted virtual desktops provide a practical, efficient and cost-effective way to address disaster recovery. One way is to deploy cloud-hosted virtual desktops as a sort of insurance policy for your workforce. You can use the cloud to have emergency virtual desktops in reserve so if users devices go down for any reason, they can be up and running immediately with Internet access to a fully functioning corporate workspace with the corporate image, applications, central files and network services. A big advantage of this approach is that users can access these emergency desktops from any device. This type of insurance policy is also extremely cost-efficient. You are not paying for physical infrastructure and your cost model is predictable because you pay for what you use, when you need it. Cloud-hosted virtual desktops are also an efficient model for disaster recovery because they make it simple for IT to provide user desktops from a location that is outside of the local region, thereby mitigating the risk of the damage that can result from a natural or man-made disaster. WHITE PAPER /4

5 Conclusion End-user computing is in the midst of a major transformation. Users have many more options in how they work, when they work, which devices they use and how they access the applications and information they need to get their jobs done. For IT professionals, this brave new world opens up new possibilities in how to most effectively support and equip users across a broad range of use cases. As we ve discussed in this article, cloud-hosted virtual desktops are playing a huge part in this paradigm shift. In the right circumstances, they empower IT with more control over costs, security and speed of deployment, while equipping users with the tools they need to get their jobs done at any time, from any location, on any device. If your organization is ready to explore the many ways in which cloud-hosted virtual desktops can help you to address some of your most important use cases, it is time to reach out to VMware to find out how VMware Horizon Air can help. Learn more about Horizon Air at and sign up for a free seven-day trial. WHITE PAPER /5