Is remote working driving the need for virtual desktop infrastructures?

Remote working provided many benefits for both employers and their employees. The ability to work from the comfort of their own homes and skip the time-consuming commutes have allowed people to cut costs and simultaneously increase comfort. Employers could focus on internal operational efficiency while reducing overhead costs of their companies, and employees could concentrate on working comfortably without fear of work being disrupted.

However, with these shifts and the ever-growing societal drive towards efficiency, companies are being propelled towards new technologies to facilitate these changes.

There is a need to implement virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI), creating an accessible workspace anytime, anywhere, that can drive the productivity of workforces in a simpler, cheaper and easier way that also integrates with cloud-based resources. Cloud technology is one of the innovative technologies pioneering this adaptation to virtual working.

While it has many benefits, the difficulties surrounding remote working landscapes cannot be ignored, and it is the duty of enterprises to find ways to combat them for a productive, proactive and protected workforce to exist.

A number of these problems are centred around companies providing the provision of adequate portable devices to a company’s workforce in order for them to work from home efficiently. This creates financial spikes which many businesses cannot afford or sustain.

There is a vital need for in-house software and devices connected to work servers through cloud integration so that day-to-day actions can be carried out seamlessly, without the provision of multiple devices and software.

With industries becoming increasingly competitive, it is imperative for companies to brainstorm innovative solutions to engage the global market successfully, while their employees work away from the office.

Businesses are finding that investing in VDIs prevents dependency on localised environments and gives access to desktop management through a virtual environment instead.

Access to VDIs not only aids big business but also smaller corporations that have less funding. The utilisation of cloud technology is pivotal for companies to offer their employees the ability to flawlessly work from home during long periods of time, from any location globally.

The cloud allows the virtual desktop to exist without concern and allows companies, big or small, to not have to provide laptops and other devices to each employee during remote working. With the internet, they have constant access to the cloud, and therefore to their work servers from a singular device.

As the ramifications of remote working were weighed up last year, studies showed that 59% of workers believed that in-office working felt substantially more cyber secure than when they worked remotely from home.

However, connecting to a specific desktop environment from one secure server allows online traffic monitoring to be far easier, also making it simpler for security patches to be made. 

Cyber attacks on systems hosted on the cloud are far more difficult to achieve, as cloud systems utilise more robust cybersecurity measures than a single household PC that only uses internal hard drives. In addition, having this centralised system ensures that regular back-ups occur so that employees cannot lose data from forgetting to save and backup their files.

As well as being safer and increasingly more accessible, VDI’s also provide much more flexibility. Troubleshooting and installations can be carried out by system administrators without detriment to the employees, and any upgrades that are needed can be actioned having no effect on the end user’s productivity.

Overall, the remote working landscape is becoming commonplace and is popularising globally, due to the recent pandemic. Contractors and mobile employees are better able to access their files and the resources they require in order to do their job effectively and efficiently. Distance is no longer an issue, nor is the type of device accessible to them to undertake the tasks.

VDIs increase simplicity, allowing tasks to be completed faster and with a smoother user experience while keeping sensitive data and personal information secure. The future of enterprise is sure to find success with the utilisation of hybrid cloud ecosystems and virtual desktops which certainly do not break the bank.

Cloud computing has certainly made the VDI landscape more inviting, and with the level of scalability that it provides, the possibilities of the work infrastructure are becoming increasingly endless. It is now an accelerated, integral part of many organisations where IT strategies across the globe can be more accessible, more secure and much safer to use.

Thanks to Robert Belgrave, CEO of Pax8 UK for this guest blog!