Is the VDI Juice Worth the Squeeze?

In theory, Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is a no-brainer for companies. By virtualizing desktops, companies enhance flexibility and productivity for employees, reduce IT expenditure, and improve security in one fell swoop.

The problem is that the reality is often very different. Instead of a seamless virtual experience, employees end up dealing with constant, demoralising performance issues, from functionality failures to time outs. And, because of the specialist nature of VDI, when things do go wrong, there is often not an easy fix, with a third of enterprises (31%) reporting such issues are escalated to L3 support every single day, while a further 40% encounter them at least once a week.

All of this means that, instead of improving productivity and lowering costs, VDI may be doing the exact opposite for many organisations. So, is the VDI juice really worth the squeeze? And, if not, how do we change the equation?

Who is VDI for?

One of the biggest reasons that the gap between possibility and reality for VDI is vast is because, most of the time, it is being brought in to help IT departments, rather than users. So, while 92% of IT workers say the employee experience is an important consideration when choosing their VDI solution, the exact same percentage admit that they are investing in it primarily to make life easier for IT, not the end users.

However, it’s precisely because VDI is being brought in to help IT teams rather than end users that so many of the problems are occurring. While nearly all (95%) of IT workers believe that VDI offers an equal or better experience than desktops, almost as many (91%) confess that cost considerations trump performance when choosing a provider.

The upshot of all of this is investment in solutions that are initially highly cost effective yet riddled with performance issues. Consequently, any savings that might have been made up front are totally wiped out (and then some!) by endless maintenance costs.

‘That’s not my problem’

These expensive support issues are compounded by the fact that, in a great many cases, tickets that are escalated to VDI specialists aren’t actually because of flaws with the VDI at all. 54% of IT professionals say that they receive VDI-related tickets because of application functionality failures, something that is often unrelated to VDI itself, while nearly half (47%) say users complain about slow performance, which can also be caused by a whole range of problems external to the VDI.

For VDI to work effectively for users, it relies on dozens of other external elements to enable seamless access to applications and data. However, because users have no insight into where the problem sits, they can often default to assuming that the VDI is the problem. This, compounded by a lack of visibility into the health and performance of each session from IT departments, results in VDI being made a scapegoat for issues across the IT environment, and is another key factor in the sky-high VDI support costs that many enterprises experience. 

No more blame game

The good news is that, while most businesses would probably say that VDI is currently failing to live up to expectations, the problems are extremely fixable, provided IT has proper insight as to where the performance issues are occurring. By giving IT teams a unified, end-to-end overview of all virtual desktop sessions, and the ability to deploy automated remediation, unlocking VDI’s true value becomes far more plausible.

Once IT has the visibility to understand the root cause of any given poor VDI session, it removes the blame game between various IT teams, which immediately cuts down on remediation time. Moreover, having visibility into how people are working as well as the health and capacity of VDI sessions means that IT can be proactive about eliminating friction points while also controlling costs by precisely managing CPU, memory and storage to supply only as much as employees need.

Taking control of the experience

Virtualised desktops have been around for a long time now, yet the problems organisations face haven’t evolved much. Too many employees are still faced with frustrating, laggy sessions and an inability to work effectively, while IT departments are still yet to realise the expected benefits.

Without a new approach that prioritises user experience as much as cost efficiency, IT teams will continue to find themselves in the same pointless dance as before. It’s time for VDI to grow up, and the only way that can happen is by giving IT teams a clear vision of the actual experience of using a virtual desktop for their users, where issues are occurring, and the ability swiftly get at root causes.