DESKTOP AS A SERVICE
DaaS capital Desktop as a Service is becoming increasingly talked about, especially with the rise of hybrid workforces. But what should be included in a DaaS solution and what are the barriers that providers often encounter among customers to adopting it and how can be they be overcome?
Two of the lasting impacts of the pandemic on businesses has been the moves to hybrid working for many office-based staff and greater adoption of cloud-hosted services as flexible solutions are sought to ensure business can be conducted anywhere. This has also brought solutions such as Desktop as a Service (DaaS) into the conversation for resellers. “DaaS is particularly attractive to organisations needing security, scalability and centralised compute with collaborative data sets such as architecture, industrial design and post-production,” says Tim Whiteley, co-founder of Inevidesk. That said, as Stephen Homer, portfolio lead for digital workplace at Getronics, notes, uptake of DaaS is slow currently. “We’re not witnessing a major rush over to DaaS,” he says. “But we are starting to see a small proportion of customers shift from buying virtual desktop infrastructure to DaaS. At the moment this is limited to proofs of concepts and that’s across most sectors but predominantly manufacturing, service and retail. “Generally, customers are using DaaS for specialist use cases where there’s a specific need, but they can’t carry out the work on a physical machine. Instead, they want to be able to build something virtually for the
flexibility it offers, such as code testing. And DaaS lends itself to this process.” But Stephen adds that interest in DaaS should grow in the future, and Andy Brown, technical services director, UK at TD SYNNEX, notes that the uptake of DaaS and adoption of cloud-hosted desktops is part of the wider trend seen in many areas for more IT to be consumed as a service. “DaaS tends to be adopted by organisations that want to provide maximum flexibility for their users while keeping close control over the way applications and services are used, or the kind of service they need to deliver,” he says. “An organisation running a virtual call centre, for example, might want to provide DaaS as a way of enabling its agents to work anywhere and on any device, in an entirely consistent and secure way. This is an important aspect of DaaS – it gives you a lot of control at the centre, so it’s possible to manage the apps and services that are used. “SMBs will use DaaS, of course, but usually for the simple reason that it is easier to manage and more flexible than having to manage desktops internally. I’d expect the steady increase in take-up of DaaS to continue as more organisations become comfortable with using IT functions and applications in the
Tim Whiteley co-founder
inevidesk.com
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DaaS is particularly attractive to organisations needing security, scalability and centralised
compute with collaborative data sets...
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