What is Desktop as a Service (DaaS)?

With the new workplace mobility trend, employees and contractors require quick resource access anywhere, anytime, and from any device. However, many businesses are struggling to find suitable alternatives to their existing systems that pose an increasing security risk, impact the end-user experience and productivity– creating inefficiencies in IT operations, and potentially draining limited resources.

What is the meaning of DaaS?

Simply put, DaaS stands for Desktop-as-a-service. Essentially, DaaS is a ‘desktop-in-a-box’ solution that usually operates in the cloud, but can be deployed in a local data center. In practice, DaaS operates as a desktop virtualizing service that provides the back-end of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to deliver remote resources over the internet.

As such, end users can easily access a company’s virtualized desktops from their PC or mobile device. Essentially, interacting with remote resources in a manner they would interact with resources installed on a local work machine. Fundamentally, this means that the company’s desktops, applications, and data reside at a third-party cloud service provider, on an architecture that’s secure and redundant by design.

How does DaaS work?

Instead of a company purchasing a bunch of hardware and software upfront and setting it up. With DaaS, they can simply provision virtual desktops, and commence using them. That simple!

Sometimes called a hosted desktop service, DaaS is mainly delivered on a pay-as-you-grow consumption and billing model. This enables businesses to basically only pay for the time desktops and applications being used by employees.

Reasons to consider adopting DaaS.

Since we now have grasped a basic understanding of the DaaS meaning, let’s see a few compelling reasons to explore adopting DaaS.

Employee Benefits

• DaaS avails end-users the flexibility to operate from anywhere, anytime, on any device. Essentially, without the cost and sophistication of traditional VDI infrastructures.
• Workers aren’t tethered to traditional desktops or laptops. This means that remote and seasonal employees, or even contractors, can access vital applications and services they need to execute their job functions.
• Employees can avert navigating access via cumbersome VPN connections that impair access or lengthen login times.
• Collaboration and communication are dramatically simplified with virtual workspaces. This is because employees have secure access to the tools and resources they require to work in unison and interact in a productive team setting.
• DaaS is a critical component of any digital transformation strategy as it significantly reduces the IT effort demanded to support end-users. This ultimately frees up your team to focus on business outcomes than IT outcomes.
• DaaS enables new end-users entering the workforce to communicate in ways that mimic their personal communication experiences. Thus, boosting greater productivity and an enhanced user experience on devices they’re already comfortable using.

Business Benefits

• DaaS provides businesses with the agility to quickly adopt new business opportunities, with favorable economics.
• DaaS also provides organizations greater visibility and increased cost control. For instance, depending on the DaaS provider, you can easily grant (or remove) access to specific applications and data, with high granularity. Or even prevent employees from making local copies of sensitive data, or writing data to insecure devices. Employee access to specialized resources like GPUs can be controlled on an as-needed basis.
• Businesses can also rapidly scale up or down with DaaS, depending on their requirements, employees uptake, mergers and acquisitions, and global growth.
• The DaaS pay as you go model allows you to pay only for what you utilize—thus simplifying operations, and reducing per-user costs.
• With DaaS, IT is easy to integrate, consolidate, and deliver on as-needed basis, in a predictable and structured fashion, without having to directly touch every endpoint.
• Enables businesses to reduce capital expenditures and operational costs, while concurrently streamlining IT maintenance and infrastructure management

IT and Security Benefits

• Helps organizations to manage applications centrally with the capability to securely package, deploy, and maintain a productive user environment.
• Enables IT departments to work in the cloud without needing to refactor their applications. Furthermore, DaaS can accelerate the cloud learning maturity in a business by enabling a focus on application service integration and delivery– without worries about tech debt and tech inertia.
• Enables organizations to meet security policy requirements and compliance standards by employing protocols to compress, encrypt, and encode data so only images are transmitted, and data no longer resides on local devices.
• Facilitates the creation of developer-style environments by granting developers quick and secure access to end-user environments. This, in turn, enables seamless development and testing, without impeding user productivity.
• Allows software developers to move fast and fail fast with access to desktop resources whenever they need them.

What is the future of DaaS?

More enterprises are now turning to DaaS solution to satisfy their digital workspace requirements. This is because traditional desktops and laptops are more costly and difficult to manage, and pose significant security challenges. Though some enterprises have successful VDI deployments, they still need options that extend them into the cloud and reduce management overhead.

TThe future of DaaS is bright as it overcomes the inherent challenges of traditional desktop and laptop systems to serve as a platform to deliver VDI from clouds. For organizations undergoing digital transformation, DaaS empowers both end-users and IT teams

End users benefit from greater flexibility to work from anywhere, and collaborate more easily with co-workers, partners, and contractors. On the other hand, IT teams benefit from simplified VDI integration and delivery, with the ability to introduce new services to an Enterprise’s digital workspace, whenever needed, at the speed of the business.

DaaS- A solution that will last

Today’s rapid pace of change in the business environment has created additional pressure points for many tech-driven organizations. This is making life challenging for IT administrators at the same time.

As the surface area of desktop and application delivery expands, so does the potential for security risks. Fortunately, DaaS delivers many of the benefits of VDI, but further simplifies desktop and application delivery in a less sophisticated, more cost-effective manner.

Furthermore, DaaS empowers IT teams with enhanced delivery models that may coincide with organization-wide initiatives to embrace strategic cloud computing initiatives. In turn, end-users can benefit from the ability to access the applications they require across a variety of devices.

Overall, DaaS offers a way to address digital workspace needs across different geographies. So, as long as employees have a stable internet connection, they can work from almost anywhere.

Written By: Gabriel Bujold