Why VDI Makes Sense for SMBs to Sail Through a Pandemic

The current pandemic has caught everyone completely off guard. Suddenly, people had no choice but to work from home with whatever systems, applications, and network connectivity they had. Reliance on IT teams, therefore, went up considerably to ensure that work didn’t stop just because someone’s system or application crashed or was compromised by a malware attack.

Life has become even more difficult for Small and Mid-sized organizations, because unlike their large counterparts, they may not have provided their workforce with the latest devices, hardware, and applications to work on. They would, therefore, have more IT support issues than large enterprises.

This is the time for SMBs to introspect and seriously plan for solutions that can make them more resilient. A VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) setup can be an excellent choice in this scenario.

As the name suggests, VDI hosts all desktops and applications on one powerful central server in your server room or data center. This has many advantages. For one, instead of having to buy new and powerful devices for each employee and set them up with the required applications, you just need to worry about one server that hosts all applications. This saves you time and effort to manage and maintain your employee’s devices.

Here are some other advantages of a VDI setup:

Easier Remote IT Support

Since VDI hosts everything on one central server, your IT support staff doesn’t have to worry about managing systems of a scattered workforce. With VDI, employees can use any device, be it their desktop, laptop, tablet, or even smartphone to access their own personal desktop remotely. Your IT team only has to worry about managing the hardware and software in one central location.

Higher Productivity and Uptime

Since everyone gets a uniform desktop and access to all the required applications, they can work more easily, which enhances their productivity. How many times has it happened that an important proposal or email couldn’t be sent out because one of your employees had a misconfigured application, or their machine was infected by malware, due to which applications wouldn’t work?

With VDI, application availability, access, and security are all within your control, so work wouldn’t stop due to trivial issues. Also, as everyone’s using the same version of applications, it’s easier for them to collaborate with each other.

Security Nightmares can be a Thing of the Past

With everyone working remotely, incidents of cyber-attacks have also gone up, leading to more data breaches. Managing the security of every employee’s device can, therefore, be a mammoth task and lead to increased chances of data theft. A VDI can help because the software environment and data access are in your control. Employees just use their own devices to access the desktop environment you’ve given them access to. This environment will remain secure even if your employees’ machines aren’t or their network connection is not secure.

You just have to worry about ensuring the security of the VDI server and ensure it has security software with the latest updates installed. So even if your employees forget to update the anti-virus software on their machines, you don’t have to worry because your data and applications are safe.

Gain Competitive Advantage

With a more uniform working environment and less downtime, your employees will be able to collaborate more easily and work more efficiently. It will allow you to focus on your customers and provide more innovative solutions instead of worrying about trivial matters like application downtime. With VDI, it won’t be a reason for holding up important work.

Lastly, make sure you have the right support for your VDI setup, be it in house or through a partner, so that the environment is constantly well maintained and kept secure. You could even setup a DR for it in the cloud to ensure that you never have to worry about downtime no matter what the situation. Moreover, with the right vendor, you won’t have to worry about the setup, configuration, and maintenance of your VDI setup.

VDI can bring more agility and the overall benefits it offers can actually make it more cost-effective than managing scattered IT systems.

By Anil Chopra, VP, research and consulting, CMR