The most integral part of an organization is its employee; however, user experience is often overlooked or underappreciated by many IT professionals. It’s a story we all are familiar with, “My PC is slow, and I cannot work.”, or the dreaded, “My PC keeps crashing ever since you installed that update.” No matter how robust we make the OS deployment, [we cannot control blah blah blah and…] having to reinstall due to an application or botched update costs time, both for IT and the end-user. Moving the desktop environment away from the workstation and into the datacenter can completely alleviate the situation.
One of the key benefits to virtualizing the desktop infrastructure is providing a known good environment every time a user logs in. By providing that “golden image”, the IT department can ensure the user’s experience will not vary day by day. The benefits only expand on from here since application and Windows updates can be tested within a single environment and distributed without having to worry about differing configurations or user preferences. The end-user’s desktop and preferences will follow them no matter where they login from, this is extremely beneficial to mobile employees who might travel between different offices or even work from home. Not only are we looking at a boost in user experience by having a familiar environment, but an increase in productivity too!
Laptops, desktops, and mobile devices all come with a cost, aside from the price tag, it comes at a cost of security. How do we secure the information we are storing on devices that might not always be in our control? Each answer comes with an additional cost, AV, EDR, and encryption to name a few. Since we are storing data centrally, the IT controls can be simplified and hardened to prevent accidental data breaches and cyber-attacks. Adding the benefits of Multi-Factor Authentication, monitoring and logging IT can remove much of the day-to-day risks to data.
