The ability of virtual desktops to enhance businesses’ IT mobility, security, and cost-efficiency has made them increasingly popular. For example, the virtual desktop market in the United Kingdom now has an estimated 12.92% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
It’s also notable that UMass Memorial Medical Center, the second-largest employer in the state of Massachusetts with 12,000 to 15,000 employees, has started to switch to a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Though UMass Medical Center’s primary motivation in switching to a VDI wasn’t to enhance the security of its IT infrastructure, it was still one of the major benefits, according to the healthcare organization’s Chief Information Security Officer Bruce Forman.
“[What using VDI] is beginning to allow me to do is have much more centralized access to the information, as it essentially never leaves the data center,” Forman told Patrick Ouellette of HealthITSecurity.com. “It all stays in a vault…We can start to ensure information resides inside of the protected data center’s wall…as opposed to being out on someone’s laptop, home, USB thumb drive etc.”
Bentleys Brisbane, a medium-sized accounting firm in Queensland, Australia, has also started to switch to a VDI. According to Rohan Pearce of Computerworld, one of the main reasons that Bentleys has adopted a VDI is because it would increase the manageability of their IT infrastructure. (With many IT infrastructures, applications are installed separately on each PC workstation, and the only way to update them is to access and change each workstation one-by-one. The applications of a VDI, on the other hand, are centralized and can be deployed and updated quickly and easily.)
Another reason that Bentleys selected a VDI deployment was that it offered a cost-efficient way to upgrade its 150 desktops running Windows XP Pro to the 64-bit version of Windows 7. (Most, if not all, of the processing and storage requirements of a VDI are handled by servers, so Bentleys wouldn’t have to upgrade its computers to correspond with its change of operating systems.) Also a motivation for switching to a virtual desktop infrastructure was mobility: according to Pearce, Bentleys wanted a solution that allowed its employees to access their files and applications from home and from the offices of their customers, and virtual desktops can be accessed from anywhere with any Internet-connected computer, tablet, or smartphone.
UMass Medical Center and Bentleys could have benefited even more from switching to a VDI if they had signed up for a Hosted VDI from Ironorbit, however. For example, our Hosted Virtual Desktops don’t require businesses to purchase or manage any on-site servers or hire any on-premise IT personnel. Other advantages of selecting a Hosted VDI from Ironorbit include:
- Flat rate pricing. Ironorbit Hosted VDIs cost only a low, flat monthly fee. The costs of a self-hosted VDI are never as stable or predictable, however, since a VDI’s hardware can fail at any time and have to be repaired and replaced.
- Better security. Ironorbit’s Hosted VDIs are monitored 24x7x365 and are protected with enterprise-level security measures such as firewalls, IPS/IDS, antivirus, spam blockers, patch management, and content filters.
- Data backups and technical support included. Our Hosted Virtual Desktops come with complete daily VDI backups and 24x7x365 US-based technical support.
Switch to a VDI that’s cost-efficient, secure, and reliable by contacting Ironorbit at (888) 753-5060 or [email protected] and signing up for a Hosted VDI or Hosted IT Infrastructure from Ironorbit today!