Physical workstations have been a core component of most businesses’ s IT infrastructures for decades. In fact, until recently, operating a small or medium business without PCs sitting in youroffice was virtually unthinkable.
Thanks to the advent of reliable and affordable Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) platforms like DesktopReady, however, that has finally changed. By running desktops in the cloud instead of maintaining on-premises workstations, SMBs can gain business agility, lower costs, improve security and more.
To prove the point, here is a list of ten reasons why SMBs should eliminate their on-premises workstations.
DaaS increases business agility
With on-premises workstations, adding more employees requires purchasing and setting up new physical workstations for them to work from. That is a complex logistical process that may take months to complete.
When you replace on-premises workstations with DaaS, however, you enjoy the agility to add new desktop environments instantly as your business grows. You can also scale back down if you need, which can be especially advantageous if you have seasonal workers or temporary employees and don’t want to have to pay for on-premises workstations that will only be used for part of the year.
DaaS increases business resiliency
With desktops that run in the cloud, employees can access critical applications and data from anywhere and at any time.
This gives businesses a huge advantage in terms of business resiliency. If employees cannot be physically present in the office, or if business demands arise when employees are not on-site, cloud desktops mean that business operations can continue normally.
DaaS improves security
On-premises workstations are subject to an array of security risks. Employees may accidentally or deliberately copy sensitive data onto a thumb drive and take it home with them. They may disable passwords or walk away from their desk while their PC is unlocked, allowing someone else to gain unauthorized access. They may lose their entire workstation while traveling, leadingto data theft, and necessitating compliance disclosures.
With DaaS, these security risks go away. All applications and data live in the cloud at all times, virtually eliminating the risk of accidental data loss. DaaS also locks down access to cloud desktops so that employees can log in only to the cloud desktops assigned to them.
DaaS improves performance
DaaS solutions give you access to a virtually unlimited pool of compute and memory resources. If your cloud desktops are not delivering the performance you need, you can easily increase the virtual hardware specifications assigned to them in order to meet your performance requirements.
With physical desktops, optimizing performance is much more challenging. You would need to replace your existing workstations entirely or add resources like memory to them manually. Either way, the process would be time-consuming, expensive, and disruptive to the employees whose workstations would be unavailable while they are being upgraded.
DaaS saves money
Cloud desktops provide a variety of cost-saving opportunities. Not only do they eliminate the need to purchase expensive PC hardware or pay in-house IT staff to manage it, but they also help avoid situations where you pay for workstations that you don’t end up needing. With DaaS, if you no longer require as many cloud desktops as you have running, you can simply turn off the excess to reduce your costs.
DaaS platforms like DesktopReady also make it possible for multiple users to share a single cloud desktop at no extra cost — another major cost-saving opportunity.
DaaS reduced IT maintenance
By taking physical workstations out of the picture, DaaS significantly reduces the size of the IT infrastructure that SMBs have to manage. You do not need to worry about keeping track of dozens or hundreds of PCs, fixing broken hard drives, purchasing replacement machines when the existing ones reach the end of their useful lives and so on.
DaaS eliminates the need for in-house IT
In fact, DaaS reduces the burden of IT maintenance so much that, for many SMBs, it eliminates the need for an in-house IT team completely. Instead of paying expensive salaries to IT engineers, you can outsource your workstation-management needs to a DaaS provider, leaving you with more cash to invest in the business.
DaaS simplifies software licensing
When you manage on-premises workstations, you have to maintain not just the hardware but also the software licenses that are necessary for the operating system and applications running on the workstations.
With DaaS offerings like DesktopReady, you can build licensing into the DaaS product. This eliminates the need for you to manage licenses yourself or worry about licenses suddenly expiring in a way that disrupts business operations.
DaaS simplifies budgeting
When you use a DaaS solution like DesktopReady, you get clear, transparent, and predictable pricing. You will pay a flat rate for each desktop that you use, and nothing more. There are no add-on fees, and pricing does not fluctuate based on factors like how many minutes your cloud desktops are in use.
This means that budgeting for DaaS is much simpler than for on-premises workstations. The latter require you to budget for both the capital expense of purchasing the hardware and the ongoing operating expenses of maintaining them, which will fluctuate from month-to-month depending on how many components you have to replace, how often you perform hardware upgrades and so on.
DaaS centralizes IT operations
Whether you keep IT operations in-house or outsource them entirely, DaaS helps keep IT efficient and streamlined by centralizing all aspects of workstation management within the cloud.You do not need to have IT engineers travel to remote sites to provide desktop support or worry about provisioning hundreds of workstations spread around a large physical location. Everythingis just a click away in the cloud.
Conclusion
Physical, on-premises workstations drag your business down. They make it harder to scale, complicate IT management, pose security challenges and make it difficult to plan and optimize your spending.
By resolving these pain-points, cloud desktops delivered from a DaaS offering like DesktopReady keep business lean, mean and efficient. To see for yourself, schedule a demo.
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