Hardware expenses, IT departments and expensive new software applications have long been considered unavoidable business overhead. However a growing trend in IT services is to supply these virtually and Desktop As A Service - DaaS, may well be one of the most cost effective measures available thus far. DaaS can be supplied in many forms and be as simple as necessary or as comprehensive as desirable.
Desktop as a service, put simply means that a user can access their desktop, their applications and even their saved work from any computer, using any OS. They could be across the street, the nation or the globe from the physical server. Basically it frees the computer accessing the virtual desktop of any need to possess resources beyond a browser. Software resides on the machine hosting the virtual desktop and the processor and memory required to run the applications are also drawn from the desktop host.
What that may mean in practical terms is that instead of requiring a brand new computer and upgrades every year or two, the company using desktop as a service needs no such upgrades. The power and upgrades must be done on the machines hosting the applications. This reduces hardware and often IT expenses to a predictable monthly fee paid out to the desktop hosting service.
There are a good number of very positive features that a remote desktop offers. The cost saving factor is one very large positive benefit. Data safety may well also be higher, since the data all resides on a separate server and is backed up by the host. In addition where several users have independent desktops on the same machines, the cost of deploying new software is decreased.
Of course for every positive there is usually a negative as well and one concern with some business owners is that they no longer control security and must rely on the machine hosting their data. Peripherals such as printers may be more difficult to set up as the desktop may well be many miles away. Some applications such as multimedia displays do not run as well in a remote desktop environment.
There are balancing factors to the objections though. The company providing the DaaS model will normally hire experts in security so that data could be safer than if it resided on company computers. Challenges in installing printers and peripherals are things the server company deals with every day and their support can usually guide the company techs through any issue. Most businesses rarely use multimedia applications and so it may well be a non-issue for many.
There is good and bad to almost any advance in technology. The business who needs to bring down overhead and yet continue to supply top of the line applications to employees could find the DaaS model one of the best advances in years. Desktop as a service may not suit every business need but it is a growing trend.
