DaaS and New Technology Set to Breathe New Life into Market

Transcription

1 DaaS and New Technology Set to Breathe New Life into Market Significant 12 Month Adoption and Upgrade Plans Survey conducted by IDG Connect on behalf of

2 R Infographic Summary Introduction Virtualisation Benefits Adoption Plans On-Premise Versus Hosted Barriers to DaaS Adoption Implementation Concerns Local Devices Deployment Plans Availability Requirements Conclusion 2. Summary of Research Key Attractions of Virtual Desktops DaaS versus On-Premise Advantages Lower Costs 70% A 68% 67% B 63% A B C Greater Network and Datacentre Operational Efficiency and Reliability 75% Supports Remote Working Enhanced Data Security Knowledge 64% 60% 80% Improved Security/ Governance/Compliance 63% D E C Improved Disaster Recovery/ Business Continuity D Minimise Application Compatibility Problems E Better Software Licensing Management 73% Access to VDI Consultancy Resources, Expertise and Assistance 65% Lower Internal VDI Management and Administration Overhead 59% Virtual Desktop Expansion Plans % 20% 31% 24% 10% 2%

3 3. Introduction Fresh Approach to Desktop Virtualisation to Drive Wider Enterprise Adoption The introduction will explore the potential advantages of on-premise centrally hosted desktop virtualisation or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) technology and cloud hosted Desktop as a Service (DaaS) platforms compared to the traditional physical desktop PC approach, and set out the differences between the onpremise and off premise models. IDG Connect polled 110 C-Level executives and IT directors and managers to get a better understanding of their current usage of, and attitudes to, desktop virtualisation technology, gathering intelligence on future implementation plans and concerns. All of those taking part in the survey worked for UK companies employing 500 or more employees, and 61% employed over 1,000 people. Respondents represent a snapshot of opinion from a broad range of industries, including software and computer services (20%), electronics (10%) and engineering (9%).

4 Top 5 Attractions of a Virtual Desktop Approach 70% 68% 67% A B Improved Security/ Governance/Compliance Supports Remote Working The practical considerations associated with virtual desktops appear paramount amongst survey respondents, reflecting the majority input (60%) from IT directors or heads of the IT department responsible for the hands on management of large swathes of desktop PCs and other devices. well as offering options for the location of staff recovery. Despite ongoing confusion around software licensing schemes applied to virtual desktops, respondents were optimistic that desktop virtualisation made these easier to manage (63%) although of those polled 14% still do not see this as significant at all. 60% 4. 64% 63% 63% A B C D E Improved Disaster Recovery/ Business Continuity Minimise Application Compatibility Problems Better Software Licensing Management Security, Remote Working and Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity C D E Improved security, governance and compliance was seen as a significant attraction of desktop virtualisation by 68% of the survey base, suggesting that centralised approach to virtual desktop image hosting is regarded as one more conducive to effective security management and protection against potential data losses. The data is only displayed on client device s screen rather than stored locally and cannot be downloaded to a USB key which is vulnerable to loss or theft for example, and if no information actually leaves the datacentre within which the virtual desktop image is hosted, the fallout associated with publishing details of any breach or paying financial penalties can be significantly reduced. Expectations around simple logistics also translate to improved disaster recovery and business recovery (rated as extremely or very significant by 64%), with virtual desktop images stored in central locations perceived as being easier to backup and recover in the event of system downtime as Whilst support for remote working was relatively high (67%), few (23%) rated support for a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy which could help IT departments secure and control employees use of personal mobile devices to access business data and applications as significant. This could suggest either that virtual desktops are not regarded as suitable for display on smartphones or tablet computers and that most remote workers still use desktop or laptop computers for the purpose, or more simply that many UK organisations simply do not have any formal BYOD policies in place, a finding which tallies with separate IDG Connect and IDC research. Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and reductions in capital (capex) and operational expenditure (opex) were viewed as insignificant by 16%, indicating that many companies continue to perceive that the implementation and management costs associated with desktop virtualisation platforms are prohibitively high or not front of mind when considering the benefits.

5 Current State of Virtual Desktop Strategies 5. Partial Migration Set to Expand Already Adopted But Plan Migration to Next Generation Solution in Next 6-12 Months Currently in Deployment Stage Already Adopted Plan to Deploy in the Next 6-12 Months Plan to Deploy in the Next Months The survey suggests that all UK organisations have either already deployed virtual desktops to some degree (50%), are currently in the rollout stage (25%) or plan to do adopt some form of virtual desktop environment in the next 18 months (25%). The 27% of respondents reporting plans to upgrade current virtual desktop environments to next generation platforms within the next 12 months, and that a further 25% plan to implement desktop virtualisation for the first time in the next 18 months, suggests that new technologies may have breathed fresh impetus into the market. Two major advances in 2013 included the emergence of more sophisticated, less expensive storage platforms which use block level deduplication to cut the number of virtual desktop images being stored without affecting latency or performance for example. In addition, new virtualised graphical processor units (GPUs) can now offload graphics processing from the CPU to the GPU in virtual environments to deliver near native performance for VMs running demanding, graphically intensive applications a trend led by NVIDIA s GRID technology which is now supported by desktop virtualisation products and hypervisors including VMware Horizon View and Citrix XenDesktop. Just as the expansion of IaaS, SaaS and PaaS services from public cloud service providers initially whetted corporate appetites for more secure, reliable flavours of the cloud service model to a certain extent, the growing list of providers - including Amazon Web Services (AWS WorkSpaces) and Google - which have recently added hosted virtual desktops to their portfolios may also prove a catalyst for broader embrace of DaaS that sees smaller businesses at the vanguard of adoption with larger companies following as benefits become better understood. Given the breadth of fresh supplier activity, vendors will need to work hard at educating potential customers around the new technology choices now available to furnish them with sufficient knowledge to make clear choices on which type of virtual desktop platform best suits their organisation....vendors will need to work hard at educating potential customers around the new technology choices now available...

6 Positive Impacts Associated with Deploying Externally Hosted Rather than On-Premise Virtual Desktops? Lower Costs Greater Network and Datacentre Operational Efficiency and Reliability Enhanced Data Security Knowledge Access to VDI Consultancy Resources, Expertise and Assistance Lower Internal VDI Management and Administration Overhead 6. 59% 65% 75% 73% 80% DaaS Offers Potential Security, Reliability, Cost and Support Advantages A key element of that desktop virtualisation platform choice will rest on where it is hosted whether on in-house server, storage and network infrastructure or data centre or an equivalent, external facility offering DaaS services delivered by a third party provider. In many cases, hosting companies operating specialised data centres provide more robust physical security and data protection compliance backed by ISO27001 certified information security management processes, broader staff expertise, greatest reliability and failover capabilities/assets backed by multiple, geographically dispersed data centres and service level agreements (SLAs). The survey base gives every impression of being aware of some of those potential advantages at least. Greater network and datacentre operational efficiency and reliability indicates that three quarters (75%) would see the benefit of hosting virtual desktops in off-premise, third party data centres rather than internal hosting facilities or server farms. Enhanced data centre knowledge also scored highly (seen as a very positive or positive benefit by 73%, alongside access to desktop virtualisation consultancy resources, expertise and assistance (65%). That 41% saw no impact or benefit associated with DaaS when it comes to a lower internal virtual desktop management and administration overhead reflects a general objection to cloud based services that continues to prevail amongst a sizeable proportion of IT managers who fear loss of control....the survey base gives every impression of being aware of some of those potential advantages As ever, cost represents the all important consideration here. Should externally hosted virtual desktops or DaaS services actually deliver on their promise of lower cost when compared to in-house virtual desktop infrastructure, this would resonate with the vast majority of respondents (80% of whom rated reduced lower expenditure as either a very positive or positive potential benefit).

7 Reasons Not to Deploy Externally Hosted/DaaS Desktop Virtualisation 100 % 0 % 7. 80% 72% 72% 71% 69% 67% A B C D E F Data Protection and Governance Concerns Predominate A B C D E F Data Protection/Privacy and/ or Governance Concerns Reduced Performance, Reliability and Efficiency Uncertainty over SLAs Loss of Control Higher Costs Underutilisation of Existing Hosting Infrastructure As ever though, IT departments are reluctant to let external cloud service providers host sensitive information or customer data on their behalf, and concerns over the integrity of data and applications stored in virtual desktops hosted in off-premise infrastructure remains a serious deterrent to the adoption of DaaS highlighted as a significant barrier by 80% of those polled by the survey. UK organisations are subject to the terms of the Data Privacy Act (DPA) and the European Union (EU) Data Protection Regulation for example, as well as industry specific compliance rules such as those set by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and its predecessor the Financial Services Authority (FSA) affecting financial services (which made up 4% of the survey). As such, IT departments need to know exactly what happens to any information stored on either on- or off-premise cloud infrastructure when systems are retired, be able to demonstrate how and when that information is deleted, maintain certainty they can get it back when they need to and keep audits of who accesses it, when and from where in anticipation of regulatory...providers must work much harder to win and maintain the trust of potential DaaS customers... scrutiny all processes which many fear may be complicated and compromised by off-site hosting and third party management practices. Doubts about the speed and reliability of existing network and telecommunications infrastructure to quickly provision and maintain the real time performance of remotely hosted virtual desktops are also apparent, whilst loss of control over the data and applications stored and hosted by third parties is an ongoing theme with all cloud services. These are all doubts which cloud service providers can address to a certain extent with simpler, easy to use management tools, real time monitoring capabilities, and service level agreements (SLAs) which go some way to guaranteeing performance and reliability either equal, or superior, to that provided by the organisation s own in-house IT infrastructure. But the fact that 72% of respondents also highlighted SLAs as a significant barrier indicates that providers must work much harder to win and maintain the trust of potential DaaS customers with deliverable contracts customised to individual organisational requirements.

8 Significant Concerns Based on Expectations and/or Past Deployments: 81% 8. 79% 82% 90% 85% 86% Stability or Performance Availability/ Network Connectivity Implementation Complexity and Timeframe Lack of Appropriate Support Skills Design of System Discovering the Exact Organisational Requirements for Virtual Desktop Use Many Organisations Wary After Previous VDI Deployments The barriers discussed in Tab 7 correlate closely with apprehension around desktop virtualisation derived either from previous VDI deployments or expectations of future installations. Whilst worries over stability and performance (which 90% rated as a significant concern) may stem from that same lack of confidence in network connectivity, IT departments may also fear that server and storage infrastructure capacity and processing capabilities are not up to the job of hosting large numbers of virtual desktops concurrently, or that they have the correct virtualisation management and provisioning platforms for the task. There is strong evidence to suggest that UK organisations feel virtual desktop deployments are complex and time consuming... Availability and network connectivity was cited as a concern by 86% of those polled, again pointing to extant doubts about the reliability, bandwidth and latency of local (LAN) and wide area network (WAN) links to support efficient virtual desktop provisioning and display. There is strong evidence to suggest that UK organisations feel virtual desktop deployments are complex and time consuming, cited as a concern by 85% of respondents. This suggests an opportunity for CSPs who can successfully prove the relative simplicity and speed of DaaS platform provisioning and management compared to on-premise data centre implementations and provide IT departments with easy to use provisioning and administration tools. Whilst 82% expressed some degree of worry about lack of appropriate desktop virtualisation support tools, 18% indicated they believed this would not present their employers with any serious challenges. A similar finding (79% and 21%) is seen in the assessment of organisational requirement for virtual desktop use, suggesting a slightly smaller majority are not entirely comfortable in making decisions on how or where virtual desktops should be implemented and may benefit from external consultancy services during initial appraisals.

9 Types of Device Currently Used to Present Virtual Desktops 100 % 50 % 0 % 9. 83% 76% 50% 35% 21% Desktop PC Laptop PC Tablet Smart Phone Thin Client Physical Desktops and Laptops are Preferred for Virtual Image Display A key advantage of the centrally hosted virtual desktop or DaaS approach is the fact that images can be displayed on a wide range of devices. However the IDG Connect survey showed a clear preference for existing systems physical desktop PCs (cited as a preferred device by 83% of respondents) and laptops (75%). This suggests many are likely to be deployed in office environments where hot desking is the norm and remote or flexible working scenarios which demand the flexibility to download or present images into whatever device the end user is harnessing for the session. In contrast to the relative lack of interest in BYOD recorded in Tab 7, many organisations would consider displaying virtual desktops on tablets (50%) and even smartphones (35%) - despite inherent restrictions in screen size, graphics capabilities and processing power but perhaps in recognition that virtual desktops presented as mobile apps lend themselves well to the common tap to use and motion gestures supported by smartphone and tablet touchscreens....many organisations would consider displaying virtual desktops on tablets (50%) and even smartphones (35%) Perhaps surprisingly, thin clients - examples of which include products from Wyse (Dell), HP and NComputing - were favoured by only 21%, suggesting a degree of dissatisfaction with the underlying technology, performance, management requirements and/or network topology associated with dedicated terminals for the display of virtual desktops. Clearly the perception that thin clients are the dinosaurs of computing architecture owing to their similarity to the traditional dumb terminal and mainframe client computing model has proved difficult to shift, despite the introduction of new technology offering better performance and management capabilities. Cost considerations are also likely to be decisive here, with traditional thin client arguments around reduced power consumption and lower maintenance costs having largely fallen on deaf ears as IT departments favour the flexibility of existing desktop and laptop computers able to perform many different functions simultaneously.

10 How Many Virtual Desktops Across All Client Devices Is/Has Your Organisation Likely To/Already Deployed? The research indicates that virtual desktops have been embraced to some extent by the vast majority of respondents with extensive deployment or expansion plans on the horizon for the next two years. Only 2% said their organisations had not deployed any or had no plans to do so, and 88% cited installations or plans involving 100 or more virtual desktop images. At the top end of the scale, 13% have engaged in, or plan, rollouts of 2000 or more, a finding which illustrates the importance of having large scale hosting facilities built on reliable server, storage and network platforms which can provision hundreds or thousands of virtual desktop images simultaneously. 13% 20% 31% 24% 10% 2% Various sales and revenue forecasts from market research companies also suggest enterprise adoption is on course for expansion. Various sales and revenue forecasts from market research companies also suggest enterprise adoption is on course for expansion. UK telecoms research company Visiongain estimated that the global cloud based DaaS market was worth $13.4bn in 2013, with TechNavio predicting in May 2014 that the market for hosted virtual desktops would grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 63.7% between 2013 and Large Scale Rollouts Widely Anticipated

11 What Level of Availability is Required by Your Organisation for Virtual Desktops? 50 % 25 % 0 % 44% 29% 12% 8% 7% 99.95% (4.38 hours downtime) 99.99% (52.56 minutes downtime) 99.9% (8.76 hours downtime) 100% (Zero downtime) % (26.28 minutes downtime) The importance of having end users virtual desktops constantly available and the perceived damage any system crash can do to employee productivity is amply demonstrated in respondents attitudes to downtime. The vast majority, 73%, reported that their organisations would settle for nothing less than hours of downtime per year (equivalent to 99.95% uptime), underlining the importance of building equivalent availability guarantees into supplier SLAs. Research company Gartner puts the average [cost of downtime] at a steep $5,600 ( 3,427) per minute regardless of the type of client device in use (whether physical or virtual), estimations on the costs of network downtime may not be far off the mark. Research company Gartner puts the average at a steep $5,600 ( 3,427) per minute, or $300,000 ( 183,615) per hour for US enterprises based on aggregates of multiple estimates for example, though inevitably those figures will vary widely according to the size, nature and turnover of the business involved. Whilst expectations of 100% uptime may seem unrealistic, it may be possible to protect specific mission critical applications and services to this extent as part of a broader SLA or availability guarantee. 11. Little Tolerance to Downtime The cost of downtime caused by the unavailability of virtual desktops specifically is difficult and perhaps almost impossible to accurately assess, given they are only likely to constitute a certain portion of most organisations overall desktop or client device estate. But given the almost exclusive reliance on network connectivity for both virtual desktops and many IT based job functions

12 12 This Conclusion survey appears to suggest encouraging news for CSPs and desktop virtualisation hardware and software suppliers who have experienced a number of false dawns when it comes to predicted mainstream adoption, the technology, with synchronicity, latency and interoperability issues having all contributed to holding it back in the past. If that sort of growth does materialise, it could be attributed to a number of factors, including better security, which is independent of the underlying hardware and can be configured and managed centrally, and encryption of data in transit as virtual desktop images traverse either the public internet or virtual private networks (VPNs). Traditional VDI has often been seen as too expensive by many enterprise buyers, particularly when focussed on dedicated thin client hardware alongside the requisite virtualisation software and management applications, whilst the necessary implementation and maintenance expertise has been relatively thin on the ground. The emergence of more price competitive hosted DaaS services might eliminate some of those hurdles for many IT departments, however. About IDG Connect IDG Connect is the demand generation division of International Data Group (IDG), the world s largest technology media company. Established in 2005, it utilises access to 38 million business decision makers details to unite technology marketers with relevant targets from any country in the world. Committed to engaging a disparate global IT audience with truly localised messaging, IDG Connect also publishes market specific thought leadership papers on behalf of its clients, and produces research for B2B marketers worldwide.