Virtual Desktop – what is it and can it help my business….?

The pandemic has resulted in many office-based businesses and its employees taking an alternative view of what constitutes work.  The largest work from home experiment the World has ever seen has shown that for office-based staff, work is now something you do, not somewhere you go.  This sea change has resulted in a technology known as ‘Virtual Desktop’ skyrocketing in popularity (although it should be said that this is not suitable for every business.) As a result, Microsoft currently have two market offerings; Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Windows 365.

So, what is a virtual desktop?  Put simply, a virtual desktop is a computer operating system that does not run directly on the endpoint hardware from which a user accesses it. Think of it as the desktop version of Netflix, this means that you can use any device (e.g. Windows, Macbook, iPad) to stream a Windows desktop and all your important business applications over the internet.  Much like Netflix you can also start the Windows desktop on a laptop in the office and go home and pick up exactly where you left off on your ipad.  This ‘de-coupling’ of the Windows desktop and your applications from a specific physical device is a key benefit of moving to a virtual desktop environment and gives your business huge flexibility.

Now you know what a virtual desktop is, we thought it would be good to highlight below some of the real-world scenarios a business or its staff usually face, and how Virtual Desktop solves them:

-         It’s gone 5pm, you’ve got a train to catch in 10 minutes and you’ve got work to finish off for a big deadline before the end of the day.  You look at the screen and despair at the thought of closing the 3 Word documents you’re working on, the 5 Chrome tabs you’ve got open, your 10 Outlook emails and then remembering what you need to re-open when you get home.  Relax and take a breath, just disconnect your virtual cloud session on your laptop, close the laptop lid and run like you stole something to catch your ride.  When you get home, open your laptop lid, re-connect to your virtual desktop session and hey presto, there are all your applications as you left them, even down to the cursor flashing where you left it in that important Word document.  Meltdown averted.

-       You’re working from home; the broadband is playing up again and your VPN disconnects constantly which typically means restarting Outlook every time to re-connect and get emails flowing again.  Virtual Desktop smoothes out these temporary little glitches so you don’t notice, and if your broadband does drop for more than a few seconds, your virtual session will remain on screen and automatically re-connect you back to where you were.  No restarting, no teeth gnashing, just a feeling of remote working serenity.

-       It’s Monday morning, you’ve got a busy week ahead and you’re at home when your laptop stops working due to a disk error or broken charging point (a common issue during lockdown).  You’d rather stick pins in your eyes than wait a couple of days for a new laptop to be built and delivered and for the broken one to be sent back.  Got a personal laptop or maybe the kids Chromebook (priorities and all that)?  Turn it on, navigate to the Virtual Desktop web portal and logon – all your apps are there ready and waiting for you in a couple of minutes.  Sanity restored.

-       Your laptop has gone ‘missing’ – it’s either (a) been stolen or (b) you’ve left it in a pub/train/taxi after giving it large on a night out. Both of these have been reported to us by staff in a previous life (we should really write a book about everything we’ve seen and heard in IT), but the end result is the same from a risk and compliance perspective.  A data protection assessment to decide whether a breach has occurred, and a potential discussion with the Information Commissioner’s Office.  Thankfully, a Virtual Desktop means no data will be stored on your laptop – it all resides securely in the cloud.  No breach to report.  Smug mode set to on.

If you would like to know more about whether a Virtual desktop solution is right for your business (and it isn’t always) then contact us.  We have been directly involved in numerous implementations over the years and have seen first-hand the transformative impact it can have on a business’ productivity.