5 Reasons Businesses Are Flocking to VDI

Here are five reasons businesses are making the switch:

1. Flexibility

The growth of remote devices and cloud-based applications is giving employees unprecedented choices for the times and places they work. Telecommuting has grown 115% over the past decade. According to Gallup, 43% of employees now work remotely at least some of the time, and more than half say flexibility is important enough to them that they would change jobs to attain it.

A virtual desktop gives workers using laptops, tablets, or smartphones the same experience they have on their office PCs. They don’t have to waste time searching for applications and files. They can work from anywhere, anytime and can easily collaborate with other workers across the globe who are using the same technology.

A study by Global Workplace Analytics found that workers at Fortune 1000 companies spend 50 to 60% of the time away from their desks. It only makes sense to increase their efficiency by reproducing the familiar office environment.

2. Lower IT Costs

Deploying virtual desktops from cloud servers is much easier and cheaper than installing and updating software on an ever-changing multitude of employee devices. The cost of a public cloud VDI workspace is 55% lower per user per year than using an on-premise solution.

Patching and updating software from a central location creates IT efficiencies. You save both by avoiding capital expenditures on infrastructure and maintenance and by lowering your IT labor costs. With virtual machines, you don’t have to worry about servers, hard drives, fans, and other parts that go bad and have to be replaced. IT workers who don’t have to spend all day repairing machines and updating software have more time to work on new business initiatives.

And with cloud hosting, you pay only for what you need at any given time, allowing you to scale up or down without overspending.

3. Increased Productivity

VDI lets employees carry their office desktop everywhere they go. That means they are just as productive at the airport, the coffee shop, or home as they are at their work station. Not having to rely on office infrastructure also means workers avoid on-site outages and downtime.

Workers gain access to new programs and features instantly instead of waiting for days or weeks, resulting in a productivity gain of $382 per user per year, IDC research has found.

4. Enhanced Security

With VDI, sensitive company information is stored at a data center instead of on individual mobile devices. Even if a device is lost or stolen, a thief would not be able to steal company information. You can use identity and access management controls to make sure employees only see as much information as they need to do their jobs.

Because patching occurs instantaneously across the enterprise, there’s less chance of suffering an Equifax-type attack that exploits application vulnerabilities.

5. Increased Energy Efficiency

The “thin client” mobile devices remote workers use consume far less energy than on-site PCs. By using VDI, you can reduce your energy footprint by 90% per user, an academic study found.

The same study said desktop virtualization saves 75% on hardware costs.

Cloud-based desktop virtualization saves enterprises money and time while giving workers what they want—the ability to work anywhere, anytime. It’s no surprise the technology is rapidly gaining market share.

Citrix and Microsoft are working together to help you smoothly deploy Windows 10 and Office 365. To learn how they can increase efficiency for your company, visit the Citrix Workspace site here.