VDI Experts: Take One Small Step to the Cloud Instead of a Giant Leap

Cloud-First or Cloud-Next?

These days, many organizations have a cloud-first strategy – an actual mandate from the top down to de-invest in data center infrastructure and migrate IT assets to a public cloud. VDI workloads are one of the first things that get moved to the cloud because making the move not only alleviates complexity, cost and performance headaches, it also opens new doors for use cases that could never have worked well with an on-prem VDI solution. Other organizations are taking a more measured approach, either because they have data center infrastructure investments to see through or because their current VDI solution works adequately for many of their users, and the IT team isn’t ready to mess with that formula. We say “fair enough.” IT people have so much on their plates that they really need to choose their battles. Workspot can help you choose a high-impact battle that takes only a few small steps to win.

The Small Steps Matter

VDI experts have been fighting in the trenches for more than a decade. Anyone with VDI experience knows what it takes to implement and manage on-premises virtual desktops, and let’s face it – it’s not easy. If you’ve been in the trenches, you’ve accumulated an impressive skill set for managing VDI. The reality however, is that while you may have VDI mastered for some use cases, there are other use cases that just can’t be satisfied with an on-premises approach – the laws of physics aren’t going to cooperate.  As an IT Leader, this is where you can take a small step that can make a huge difference to the business. We all know that one of the most significant benefits of virtual desktops is that it can be a huge productivity booster because suddenly people can work anywhere, at anytime, using any device. This works really well for users who are close to the data center where their virtual desktops live, because latency is low, so they see great app response times. On the other hand, users who are remote from the data center location do experience latency, and it can kill  productivity. No amount of your amazing VDI skills is going to change that reality.

If it Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It

Bert Lance, Jimmy Carter’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, made this phrase famous in 1977 when he stated that he believed he could save the country billions if he could just get the government to adopt this simple motto: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” He explained: “That’s the trouble with government: Fixing things that aren’t broken and not fixing things that are broken.” It applies to our discussion of VDI here too. If VDI is working well for a portion of your users, don’t “fix” it; keep your current solution in place if that makes sense for you, but fix the performance issues your remote users are having.

Solving the Latency Problem for Remote VDI Users

We’ve all experienced the frustration of slow application response times. It always seems to happen when you’re under pressure to make a deadline, and when that happens for your users, they will likely complain to IT.  It’s not necessary to put your users – or your IT team – through this pain anymore. The battle to deliver outstanding performance to remote users is worth waging because now, it’s easy to win, it will free up your time and make your life more pleasant when users are happier, and improving productivity goes directly to the bottom line. That is the very definition of strategic IT: Innovating to support business growth. Since you can’t address this problem with on-prem VDI, you need a different way to address what’s broken. For users who are feeling the pain of slow response times due to latency, you can make a change that is easy, enterprise-ready, has low TCO, is secure, and features 99.95% availability: Workspot Desktop Cloud on Microsoft Azure. All you have to do is just locate a cloud PC in the public cloud region closest to each user. With Microsoft Azure’s 50+ regions around the world, most users will be less than 50ms away. That means really, really fast app response times. So now, instead of listening to all those complaints about slow performance, why not kill latency instead of productivity? Just give your remote users a cloud PC. Easy. Then the messages you get will sound more like this: “I can’t believe how fast the performance is!”, or my favorite customer quote: “We’re seeing ridiculous speed with Workspot on Azure.”. That’s what you want to hear! Everyone who is close to the data center and getting decent performance can just keep on keepin’ on with their VDI desktops, and you won’t have added to your workload because Workspot runs your new cloud PCs for you (but you can take all the credit!).

Take that Small Step

Taking small steps really can be better than taking a giant leap. We get that, and we can help you fix this single use case, and you can make a big difference. By solving the pain of unacceptable latency for remote users, you’re actually creating new opportunities for your business, and we’re willing to bet that won’t go unnoticed.  We’ll make sure your cloud PC implementation is a winner! See how it works by scheduling a live demo with us, and feel free to ask all your hard questions.