Understanding Cloud Desktop and its Many Benefits

Featured article by Kevin Patel, Service Assurance Technology Analyst at Xangati

A majority of businesses are moving critical applications from physical personal computers to the virtual environment. A 2015 IT priorities survey confirms this where 76% of the IT decision makers surveyed indicated their preference for cloud bases productivity applications. About 57% stated they would roll out enterprise file sharing and synching services on the cloud.

A cloud desktop is one such cloud computing solution that lets you access your desktop, files and business apps in the cloud, thus you can work on a range of devices wherever you are. That is, with the cloud desktop, your computer is powered online as opposed to a local hard drive.

Benefits of Cloud Desktop

A cloud desktop harnesses the power of the internet to deliver a computing system that is quickand easy to use. Consequently, you can enjoy the flexibility of being able to access a range of services and apps via a smartphone or any other device. That is, you do not have to be tied at your desktop rather you have the freedom of working differently from anywhere. Here are some top benefits of virtualization using the cloud desktop.

Always Available – Access your desktop whenever, wherever

A hosted desktop grants access to their desktops over the internet through conventional PCs and Apple Macs as well as other simple devices like smartphones, tablets and thin clients. This means that you have the same experience with the cloud desktop as you would with the desktop PC as applications work the same and the performance levels are the same even when you are working over a wireless broadband.

Reduced Capital Expenditure

With the cloud desktop, you do not need to purchase new PCs and servers or even pay for software license upgrades. That is, you will not invest in assets that are depreciating rather use the resources for other strategic investments.

Safe, secure and resilient

With cloud desktop, you are guaranteed of secure log-on through Microsoft Remote Desktop Services protocol encryption as well as the ability to limit a user’s access to particular folders, applications and files. This means that you have control over the security of your data. Moreover, the virtual desktops will run on dedicated servers that are exclusively set aside for your company. This kind of protection coupled with centralized management of profiles helps companies increase compliance postures, assures you of data security and privacy.

Centralized data

Rather than having your data spread across several computers, cloud desktop helps you hold your data in a central place, usually on the Hosted Desktop. This helps in reducing the amount of time that is wasted when you want to locate important documents.

Flexible Working

A number of studies indicate that availability of home working boosts staff morale, productivity and loyalty. This is quite instrumental in recruiting a vast geographical location because you can easily eliminate daily commuting. Moreover, you can access your data on the go from wherever. However, all computers that are connected to the server may be used to securely access the cloud desktop.

Collaborative Working

Cloud desktop is instrumental in improving productivity through sharing folders, documents as well as calendars across your team. This goes a long way in increasing productivity.

Lower IT Operating Costs

When you have your desktop on cloud, you are assured of cutting on IT costs. That is, you tend to spend less time maintaining and managing your IT system consequently paying only for the much that you will use. Other than the operating costs, you will also save on energy bills and insurance premiums even as you take care of easy and flexible monthly payments.

Easier Budgeting

When you have cloud desktop, the fixed monthly pricing will make the costs predictable as there are no hidden charges.

How Xangati Helps in Cloud Infrastructure Performance

Maximizing the return on hardware investment in your virtual infrastructure often looks like a lose-lose proposition. That is, when you play it safe, you could end up adding too many resources and the result will be over positioning in order to escape cloud performance issues. On the other hand, when you get aggressive where resources seem insufficient, then there will be a performance degradation and contention.

This is where Xangati comes in to offer continuous virtual desktop monitoring for your infrastructure, and in real-time to ensure optimal performance of the infrastructure for particular workloads with the accurate amount of resources.

Ultimately, the major metric for success in the implementation and scaling of large virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments. This requires the ability to keep track of all interactions on your end-to-end virtual desktop infrastructure environment through cloud performance monitoring. Xangati provides availability, performance as well as capacity utilization over time and instantaneously in order to identify any cloud performance problem with your infrastructure.

Xangati offers an active performance index where alerts come from the DVR recordings indicating the source of cloud performance issues in high resolution detail. In fact, you can experience improvements in assurance of end user experience, as well as up to 70% accelerated and improved time to problem resolution. In conclusion, Xangati goes a long way in ensuring improved performance of your cloud desktop so that you harness all the benefits, and you can tell storms with second by second intuitions to proactively track the impact as well as knowing how you can remedy them within the shortest time possible.

Author Bio – Kevin Patel is a Service Assurance Technology Analyst at Xangati. A self-proclaimed tech geek, with a passion for the ever-changing world of virtualized and hybrid-cloud environments. Kevin has a passion for dissecting tech topics such as virtualization, data center migration, storage, networking and cloud. On his days off, he can be found watching sci-fi movies, rock climbing or volunteering.