Mobile
Cloud – a Tipping Point for VDI Investment?
There are several of reasons why VDI has not gained the momentum that many thought it would even two or three years ago, but let’s look at a couple of key obstacles to adoption:
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For years the tech industry has been touting VDI as a panacea for all ills, from security to remote collaboration to hardware cost efficiency. The proposed use cases have been many, but the skeptics who have converted to VDI over the last few years have been relatively few, as market penetration has lagged behind projections. There are several of reasons why VDI has not gained the momentum that many thought it would even two or three years ago, but let’s look at a couple of key obstacles to adoption:
- Disappointing performance. Early adopter end users became frustrated when dropped connections and sluggish screens slowed their work to a crawl, and prevented them from doing many of the tasks they could manage on a traditional nuts and bolts endpoint. CIOs and IT Admins who bought and deployed VDI were flooded with user complaints if they forced employees to use a solution that didn’t deliver on its promises.
- Lack of a killer buying driver. VDI adoption has suffered from the fragmentation of use cases across industries. Healthcare wants VDI for roving staff, Finance wants VDI for remote access call center employees, big business wants VDI to cut hardware and administrative costs. But there has never been one issue that has cut across all industries, that has made the buying public think “I have to look at VDI now.”
My my, how things change! In the last 12-18 months, we have seen a confluence of events that has transformed the reality of virtual desktops. Ubiquitous broadband and exponential improvements from new cloud-based technology have brought performance to new levels that leave users impressed. And as tablets and smartphones take the world by storm, the BYOD wave is driving new products to market which use VDI to enable end user choice and drive down management costs. Enabling this new way to work has at times made IT departments cringe at the thought of having to figure out what technologies will work together to deliver VDI. That is why VMware and some of their key partners have developed a set of solutions that help IT departments take advantage of these improvements to enable the modern, mobile workforce with pre-tested solutions that take the guesswork out of implementing a VDI solution. Trend Micro—my employer—is one of those partners. We worked with VMware to validate that our security solutions work together as part of VMware’s Mobile Secure Desktop. The Mobile Secure Desktop solution enables BYOD and delivers a seamless experience for virtual desktop users, while ensuring actually real security of corporate assets. So I think we’ve crossed the tipping point…mobile workforce rejoice! Bring on your smartphones, laptops, desktops and tablets…work from home, office or coffee shop, and prepare to be surprised and delighted with the experience.