As remote and hybrid work rises in popularity, so will the adoption of technologies that prioritize agile, secure end-user computing.

Amitabh Sinha, Co-Founder and CEO, Workspot

January 30, 2023

5 Min Read
clouds with dollar signs
Pixabay

In this new year, IT budget planning is top of mind for business leaders. The pandemic propelled the adoption of remote work, prompting many businesses to invest in new or expand existing IT solutions to stay afloat. While some decisions were initially thought to be temporary, many companies found that employees were actually more productive in a remote work setting, and IT teams are rethinking their approach to end-user computing to address the long term.

Enterprises across all industries have accelerated their digital transformation to accommodate evolving employee demands for flexible workstyles. In fact, 76% of them agree that doing so enables them to recruit and retain top talent from a competitive, global pool. As companies continue to support remote work, legacy technologies such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) will be replaced.

For business leaders seeking reliable, secure, and scalable solutions to enable remote access to business-critical resources, three key cloud computing trends will need to be considered:

1. Gone are the days of on-premises VDI

If the past couple of years have taught us anything, it is that to thrive businesses must be willing to adapt. As a result, cloud transformation is on the rise, with 83% of IT leaders reporting that cloud strategies have been expanded or accelerated because of remote work. Agility requires an IT architecture that is built for a modern enterprise, designed to evolve quickly and easily in response to change.

Just as the film industry shifted from VCRs and DVDs to online streaming services, VDI is also evolving, moving from on-prem, DIY desktops to cloud-native, SaaS infrastructures. As it becomes increasingly clear that traditional VDI and physical PCs cannot keep up with today’s security, performance, scalability, and reliability requirements, IT leaders are now turning to cloud-native end-user computing solutions.

Physical workstations and virtual desktops using on-premises VDI present major challenges for IT personnel. The complexity of each approach prevents instant scalability, which delays productivity for end-users and complicates collaboration between multiple locations. On top of that, these approaches are costly. Expensive hardware refresh cycles are required to access technology updates, and resource intensive VDI management, troubleshooting and maintenance is unsustainable for most organizations.

Companies across all industries are deploying cloud PCs to provide their business with the scalability and cost efficiencies needed to maintain a competitive advantage. Replacing the traditional access to resources with a cloud PC ensures secure, high-performance access from any device or browser, future-proofing end-user computing so organizations are prepared for the next technology wave or business upheaval.

2. Hybrid and multi-cloud strategies are the future

In a recent survey, 90% of IT decision-makers indicated that multi-cloud strategies are working for their enterprises. Given that migration to the cloud is an investment that requires time and manpower, many organizations make the shift gradually, meaning that at some level they still operate with their legacy investments – for example on-prem data centers.

A flexible cloud PC solution with multi-cloud and hybrid capabilities enables a smooth transition away from the on-prem data center and to the cloud. But to reap the benefits, there are several considerations when developing an effective multi-cloud budget strategy -- the first is to define the characteristics of each workload moving to the cloud. Next, budgets should be allocated by project so each workload can be optimized -- across multiple dimensions -- separately. Finally, selecting the right cloud vendor for each project is imperative, as each public cloud has unique strengths and weaknesses as well as variable cost structures.

With these considerations in mind, enterprises can decipher specific logistics -- for example, whether cloud consumption should be billed hourly or annually depending on the use case. Making informed decisions in these scenarios requires project leaders, financial and product teams to align on the future goals of the business, along with deeply understanding the specifics of each project and workload.

3. Cloud PCs are serving as the modern ‘insurance plan’ for ransomware recovery

The average cost of a ransomware attack is $4.5 million, but that does not account for the most detrimental consequence: complete loss of productivity. Shutting down workplace operations to investigate and stabilize the attack surface is not only costly in a financial sense, but also damaging to brand reputation.

Business continuity requires enterprises to go beyond prevention by developing a strategic recovery plan. In this context, Cloud PCs are serving as a modern “insurance plan” for ransomware recovery, enabling employees to resume working while IT leaders investigate and mitigate the damage.

According to a Sophos Report, the average time it takes to remediate a ransomware attack is 30 days, meaning an entire month of downtime that can cost upwards of $10 million in productivity losses for a company of 1,000 people is not unusual. Cloud PCs allow business leaders to operate with peace of mind knowing that they can provide secure access so people can get back to work, within an hour or so after an attack to keep the business running. Given the scope of the threat landscape today, the cost of securing a fleet of cloud PCs on standby pales in comparison to the financial risk of 30+ days of downtime.

Future-proofing Your Business for 2023 and Beyond

In 2023, companies have important decisions to make to ensure they are competitive in the evolving business world. As remote and hybrid work rises in popularity, so will the adoption of technologies that prioritize agile, secure end-user computing. Cloud PCs support the continuous evolution of hybrid work environments, creating an “evergreen,” future-proofed IT infrastructure.

About the Author(s)

Amitabh Sinha

Co-Founder and CEO, Workspot

Amitabh Sinha is the Co-Founder and CEO of Workspot. He has over 20 years of experience across enterprise software, end user computing, mobile and database software. Prior to Workspot, Amitabh was the General Manager for Enterprise Desktops and Apps at Citrix Systems. Amitabh has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. To learn more about Workspot, you can follow Amitabh on Twitter and LinkedIn. To discover more about the real-world benefits of Cloud PCs, check out the Workspot website.

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