Sector RoadMap: virtual desktops in 2014

1. Summary

Cloud-based applications are becoming central to our daily lives. The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) phenomenon has resulted in corporate IT’s reduced control of the data and applications being accessed. Employees are increasingly using disparate devices, operating systems, and platforms to access content. They can no longer be tied to the desk, and they believe that mobile devices help improve their work-life balance. Greater organizational agility stems from the empowerment of employees to access their apps and their data from anywhere to do their jobs, which is increasing employee productivity.

Amid a perfect storm of market drivers and use cases like the BYOD phenomenon and the emergence of cloud technologies, this year we have seen enterprises overcome the inertia to start the adoption of virtual desktops.

Virtual desktops empower enterprise IT by providing them greater security, control, and centralized management. IT can disable USB ports, CD-ROM drives, and clipboards, and it can even control the ability to print, which can boost data security and regulatory compliance. Centralized data store facilitates granular data mining and allows IT to control the entire digital footprint related to a user.

Additional desktops can be easily spun up when there are minimal investments and setup times required. Compared to PCs and laptops, virtual desktops drastically lower power consumption and extend the life cycle of the end points.

Another virtual-desktop consumption option is a cloud-powered hosted Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution offered by managed service providers (MSPs). With DaaS, there are no up-front capital investments, and businesses can leverage the pay-per-use model of the cloud to lower their capital expenditures (capex) and operational expenditures (opex) to utilize virtual desktops.

This Gigaom Sector RoadMap™ identifies and categorizes the principal Disruption Vectors at play and profiles a number of significant solution providers in the space.

This report will examine:

• The evolution of virtual-desktop infrastructure (VDI) from virtualized desktops to DaaS
• The key drivers of the hosted virtual-desktop market
• Existing offerings and how they rank within the defined Disruption Vectors
• Choices for deploying a hosted virtual desktop
• How a hosted virtual desktop fits into the enterprise cloud strategy
• The future of hosted virtual-desktop technology, including the market viability and value to enterprises

Key:

• Number indicates company’s relative strength across all vectors
• Size of ball indicates company’s relative strength along individual vector

Source: Gigaom Research

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