Preparing for a virtual desktop world

May 26, 2021

The new age of the remote employee is upon us. Close to half the workforce in the U.S. never worked from home before the worldwide healthcare crisis, Statista reports. Today, 44% work from home five days a week. Under today’s circumstances desktop virtualization will become more widespread

Companies had to scramble to adapt their services and systems so that business could continue. Now, they are making significant long-term changes for a workplace that will never be the same. In some cases, desktop virtualization will even become the rule rather than the exception as companies rethink their overall strategy for employee experience.

Cloud migration also has a role in driving the growth of the desktop virtualization market, which was valued at $6.7 billion in 2020 and is expected to nearly double by 2026, according to Mordor Intelligence.

There are many other factors in favor of moving to virtual desktops. One is that companies are broadening use of virtual desktops across their workforce to give employees more flexibility. Another is that they are making themselves attractive to a wider pool of remote talent with hard-to-find expertise who don’t want to move to take a job. Desktop virtualization is also a vital asset for providing business continuity.

Virtual desktops save costs, which has become a higher priority for many companies that need to offset the revenue declines they have experienced.

With a virtual desktop model, there’s less complexity for IT operations, especially when businesses partner with service providers to implement and operate fully managed end-to-end virtual desktop infrastructure and applications.

Addressing virtual desktop security concerns

IT security and policy compliance has always challenged desktop virtualization deployments and is probably one of the biggest reasons some companies have been hesitant to adopt it widely. With the ability to take advantage of the native Azure security features in Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), including multi-factor authentication, company leaders can be more confident about tightening security and compliance.

Assuring the right cyber-security foundation was in place for desktop virtualization was a major goal for one of our customers in the U.K. public sector, so that it could maintain compliance with its IT security standards and policies. We were able to address that issue for its 2,000-plus users with our Virtual Desktop and Application Services solution based on Azure-native WVD, which leverages our comprehensive virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and managed desktop virtualization and application service offerings including managed security services.

Our customer’s timeline and constraints called for us to move fast, and we deployed a turnkey solution that included design and implementation – as well as ongoing support – in just 6 weeks. Now the project is expanding to increase the number of business applications and the organization has the flexibility to quickly and easily expand the solution for more users.

Recently we became one of the first Microsoft partners to receive the WVD Microsoft Advanced Specialization certification, which recognizes our expertise in deploying, optimizing, and securing VDI on Azure with WVD. This attests to our understanding and experience in helping businesses create the right VDI design and model – public cloud or hybrid deployments – for WVD. We’re proud of this recognition and validation of DXC as a trusted provider to deliver a comprehensive solution for WVD environments.