Connecting Your Business with Virtual Desktops

Desktop virtualisation offers a novel way for businesses to reduce costs, boost efficiency, and even improve network security. It’s little wonder then that the technology has been greeted with widespread enthusiasm. Thirty-six and half percent of businesses surveyed by Evolve IP at the beginning of this year. They already implemented a virtual desktop system, and 97.5 percent of them said they were highly satisfied with it. Moreover, one in three plan to implement a virtual desktop as a service solution over the next three years. Clearly, desktop virtualisation is taking the business world by storm—so what is a virtual desktop and is it the right solution for you?

One computer, thousands of monitors

Desktop virtualisation allows you to connect physical desktops with a remotely hosted operating system (and its applications), regardless of how old or new the receiving desktop is. In other words, a single server provides the computing power for your virtual environment—all your employees need is a screen.

Cut costs and gain speed

One of the chief benefits of virtual desktops is that they save you from spending money on expensive physical desktops. Instead, you can invest in one server and use it to make your business’s computer environment available on multiple inexpensive desktops. There’s no loss of performance capability if you do this. In fact, since you only have to manage one system (on your server), it’s often quicker and smoother.

Secure mobility

Large companies can take advantage of virtual desktops to provide employees with greater flexibility. For example, Suncorp Group is Australia’s largest general insurer and fifth largest bank. It now uses desktop virtualisation to give its employees the freedom to move around the office, work from home, and even access their desktops from the field.

According to Gartner, this approach is also more secure because each virtual desktop is remotely managed to ensure it meets compliance standards. As a result, employees needn’t worry about installing software, backing up files, or scanning for viruses. Moreover, when employees view data, it isn’t transferred to their personal device, but remains in a secure, centralised location.

Traveling light

Virtual desktops free mobile employees from lugging around expensive high-performance machines with disk drives, huge storage capacity, and their pesky need for routine hardware updates. A light laptop with a screen, a keyboard, and an Internet connection is all they need. And if a device ever crashes while running a virtual desktop, it’s immediately isolated. If everybody else in the network can carry on helping your business achieve success.

Virtually perfect

There are a few obvious disadvantages to implementing desktop virtualisation. We can even expect that the technology’s increasing popularity will lead to new ways of improving and creatively employing it. In other words, desktop virtualisation is only going to get better.