Overcoming the Challenges of Virtual Desktops

Victoria Masson of Wisper discusses how you can improve your team’s desktops.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the way we work. Face-to-face work has given way to telework and the increase in teleworking has shone a light on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), along with flexibility, accessibility and management.

With COVID-19, companies of all sizes had to adapt quickly in order to support their employees. As a result, VDI has exploded and has become essential. By 2023, Gartner predict that the impact of COVID-19 on virtualisation is estimated at 70%.

Today we are no longer talking about a temporary shift to desktop virtualisation but a sustainable evolution as 67% of companies aim to make employee teleworking sustainable. As a result, the virtualisation market will expand over the decade by an estimated $12,971.3 million, according to ResearchandMarkets.

However, faced with the many issues of cost, complexity and performance, some companies are deciding to shelve their VDI projects.

The promise of VDI is that it simplifies desktop management by allowing all desktops to be managed centrally. This simplifies software upgrades and security enhancements.

Of course, VDI does not only involve virtualisation, as the IT team also has to deal with servers, storage systems and software, for example.

The main argument for VDI is the remote access to workstations from different locations and devices, but the network connections increase the probability of cyber attacks.

Because of its structure, a cyber attack on a single workstation could affect the entire fleet, so it is imperative to have a continuity plan in place to protect the entire infrastructure and achieve high availability.

In order to save money, IT teams often decide to load as many virtual desktops as possible into as little storage as possible, which leads to latency problems. Network latency is detrimental to the user experience, as are multimedia applications that are almost unusable.

To overcome these problems, vendors must use workarounds that are often complex and limit the benefits of virtualisation.

Getting started with VDI can be a significant investment, as it requires investment in new hardware and resources to set up that hardware and this quickly impacts on the VDI hype.

Organisations also need to be vigilant about the licensing of installed software to avoid complaints from license providers and the associated financial penalties.

COVID-19 has precipitated decisions to manage telework without companies being prepared. It is necessary to have a virtualisation plan to estimate the overall cost and benefit and decide on its implementation.

One tool that might help you on your way is Wisper’s ceBoxOS solution, which allows for the centralisation of desktops and responds to the issues mentioned above.

Such tools will also enable you to centraliae the management and deployment of workstations and to eliminate traditional problems.