Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI): The Future of workplace flexibility

Shifting workplace trends drive adoption of VDI

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new era of remote and hybrid work as organizations needed to enable their workforce to work productively outside the traditional office environment. This shift highlighted several challenges with supporting a distributed workforce and challenged many legacy virtual private network (VPN) solutions. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) emerged as a solution that could deliver the reliability, security and manageability needed to support employees wherever they are working. With the workplace evolving to offer greater flexibility even post-pandemic, VDI adoption continues to accelerate.

VDI delivers apps and desktops as a managed service

With VDI, a virtual desktop is hosted in a secure data center instead of on an individual user's device. When users log in, it's as if they are sitting in front of their normal office computer but they can access it from anywhere via a thin client or their own device. IT maintains control over the virtual desktops in the data center which means apps, settings and security patches can be centrally managed and updates are seamless for end users. VDI abstracts applications and data from the device so workers can be productive from any location using their desired device form factor without compromising security or control for IT.

Secure access from any device strengthens a hybrid workforce

As organizations shift to hybrid work models, enabling secure access from a variety of employee-owned and company-owned devices is critical. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure fulfills this need by separating the data and computing resources from the client device. With VDI, IT can apply consistent security, governance and control policies regardless of whether employees are using corporate-issued laptops, tablets or their personal smartphones. Further, VDI doesn't require a powerful local device - even low-cost thin clients can deliver a full-fledged desktop experience when connected to virtual infrastructure in the cloud or data center. This flexibility future-proofs organizations for an increasingly distributed, BYOD-friendly workforce.

Simplified management of desktop environments

For IT teams, VDI brings significant management and support advantages over physical desktops. With virtual desktops centralized in the data center, updates to Operating systems, security patches, and application deployment can be rolled out as a gold image to all virtual machines simultaneously with zero touch provisioning. There is no need for remote hands to upgrade hardware. Further, VDI standardizes the desktop environment so troubleshooting and support is agnostic to individual device differences or locations. The centralized management console gives IT real-time insight into performance, usage, security and hardware resource allocation. VDI removes bottlenecks around configuration changes, hardware refresh cycles and support for diverse locations and devices.

Better experience drives adoption and productivity benefits

Early concerns around the performance of VDI have been eased by advances in GPU virtualization, wide area networking and high performance computing hardware. Today's VDI solutions can deliver a desktop experience on par or better than physical machines for most common business workflows. With smooth performance, VDI removes location as a constraint for work without compromising user experience or productivity. Employees value the flexibility to work securely from anywhere whileorganizations have reported benefits such as better collaboration, reduced costs from device refreshes/upgrades and greater resilience during disruptions. As the experience improves, VDI adoption continues to increase with more organizations embracing hybrid work models for the long term.

The future of work demands Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

The last two years have proven that distributed, flexible workforces are crucial to business continuity. As employee expectations around remote work evolve, traditional VPNs will increasingly struggle to securely deliver virtual apps and desktops at scale. VDI has emerged as the solution for IT to reliably enable remote employees without compromising security or manageability as organizations adapt to new workplace trends. With ongoing enhancements in infrastructure performance, VDI is primed to play a pivotal role in powering the flexible hybrid work of the future. As adoption rises, VDI will continue transforming how organizations provision, secure and support modern digital workspaces.

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