A New Frame of Thought. . .
This blog entry explores the results of the VDI Like a Pro EUC State of the Union 2018 Survey. Check it out here!
I’m Jon Eugenio, and I am one of the new Solutions Architects here at Frame. I’ve had the pleasure of being in the IT and virtualization industries for around 20 years. It’s been a pleasure because it’s been unbelievable to witness the industry progress from green/cyan terminals (then called server-based computing) to Apps/VDI, and now Desktops as a Service. VDI as a workspace delivery method has matured to supply both small and large enterprises with an avenue to transform the way they provide their workplaces. This is why surveys like “VDILikeaPro” are available at an appropriate time! They provide us with better visibility into common trends that continue to drive the direction towards growth and adoption.
But why? And what are your insights on the survey?
Before I joined Frame, I was given the opportunity to participate in the survey as a respondent (as I had done the previous year). This time, I’ll share my impressions of some of the results from a Frame Solutions Architect’s point-of-view.
First and foremost, the breadth and quality of the survey questions was very thought-provoking. The results from the 750 participants this year, in my opinion, had one underlying theme: a steady move to cloud-based technologies as a bridge for migration from aging on-prem application and VDI environments. That does not necessarily indicate that on-premises VDI is not relevant! However, I believe that on-premises VDI usage remains steady until a litmus test for the cloud can be made. In this scenario, it might indicate that hybrid on-prem and cloud-delivered workspaces could help drive the momentum in the future to the cloud.
For instance, while finance, technology, and government sectors have been at the forefront of VDI adoption, a rise can be seen in adoption for healthcare as well. This is an indicator that the original reluctance for VDI that was apparent in previous years has subsided and a swing from full adoption to support and transformation has been made. There is an impetus to change, especially for aging VDI environments that are in a change window of 5 years or more. Approaching this a different way, it might explain the decline in both physical PC refresh and the move away from on-prem virtualization. Those of us in this industry see more of an investigation of cloud technologies… with caution. Has DaaS (Desktop as a Service) finally replaced the physical desktop refresh cycle? Or is this just a continuation of a possible shift in cost structures?
The respondent data also shows us not only how desktop and app changes are afoot, but allows us to observe new trends in cloud-based scenarios. While legacy server operating systems like Windows 2008 are on the decline, and while some respondents have chosen to utilize Windows 2012 R2, some are choosing to skip ahead and move to Windows Server 2016 or Windows 10. This appears to be leading people to explore DaaS for remote application access. You can see this in some use cases such as fully installed Office 2016 versus using online Office 365. It’s pretty interesting to think that companies have found that while packaging applications is useful in some scenarios, it often creates more administrative overhead. I’ve noticed that customers want to move toward an à la carte delivery of applications (in the cloud or not) to move to a consumption/subscription-based model. It’s sometimes the delivery of these use cases that triggers a move from traditional IT delivery to Shadow IT.
Shadow IT: that undercover secret agent which quietly lurks in the background as project leaders and application owners feel hesitant about involving traditional IT. Shadow IT is sometimes borne out of necessity. Over the years, I’ve seen Shadow IT become an avenue to speed up adoption of a new technology, whether on-prem or in the cloud. As we see more conversion to consumption/subscription based models, will this finally allow IT to be more agile and catch up to Shadow IT? Perhaps the cloud will be helpful in this model. At least — there is a small clue of that in some of the survey data. What’s more, the data indicates that this is also enabling the decrease of small non-VDI deployments, but most of those are staying on-premises. Perhaps a hybrid cloud model could be used as a bridge for strategic desktop and application delivery? Maybe.
Coming at it from a different Frame of thought…
But let’s look at it from a different frame of thought. Yes, the pun was intended — I’m full of dad jokes. While there are predominantly Windows 7 (64 bit) deployments out there, there’s a slow change (as we’ve seen with most OS deployments in the past) to newer versions of Windows, like Windows 10. Traditionally, the question that was lingering in folks minds was “should I go non-persistent or persistent?” The survey seems to resound with non-persistent or “stateless” as the new king. Why is this? Because persistent, while solving some problems, also created a few others. Could there be a change to more traditional Windows applications instead of homegrown applications? Only you can answer that for your environment. At Frame, we’ve seen that people are wanting to install these applications in the OS build and get away from packaging them. We’ve also seen that layering has become attractive, especially for compatibility’s sake. This leads one to ponder about about — you guessed it — personalization. While most companies out there are using a profile solution for personalization, they’re still searching for an answer to their needs.
Those of you that responded to the survey seem to agree that traditional on-premises VDI deployments are always hindered by complexity. Whether the complexity stems from product components, environmental complexity, or over-analysis paralysis — it slows down the rate of change. Interestingly, the survey mentions that some of you are looking at public cloud. The public cloud…where, if you don’t want to watch it, the definition will begin to become foggy at best. The survey data seems to indicate that people might be fearful of this change, but still want to try some use cases as their first foray into the cloud.
Okay, I’m game, so what does Frame see?
We’re seeing customers come to us with strategic use cases they’ve never had before. We are also seeing a migration to cloud with some infrastructure (databases, file servers, content repositories) and as the survey shows us, a move to Microsoft Azure.
In case you didn’t know, we support workloads in both Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS at Frame. Moving user workloads into the cloud should be easy, and you should have the choice — so we built it that way! Lately, we’ve seen people worldwide dipping their toes into a cloud-first desktop and application strategy. For instance, we’re seeing more interest in DaaS as a migration strategy away from Windows 7 and 8.1. But let me ask you this: should every one of your end users have a desktop, or just the applications that they need to accomplish their job?
Previously, most people assumed they had to wholesale move everything to the cloud, including their backend resources. With some legacy applications, this is still true. But what if you could create a hybrid model, where you’re still using your on-premises legacy fat/thin client technologies, but everything new is set up in the cloud moving forward? What do you get in this type of scenario? You get Hybrid Cloud with a dash of on-prem. No more thin clients, no more need for server sprawl, just simple delivery.
In reading the “VDI Like a Pro” survey, it helped shed some light on seeing that some companies are slowly making decisions to move towards user workloads in the cloud. While in some cases, they’re leaving those environments to linger until the product life-cycle completes.
Summary:
To sum it up, my main takeaways from the survey were:
- Most VDI environments are in their aging 3 to 5 year life-cycle. Some customer environments don’t have a strategy for the end of that life-cycle.
- The smaller, non-strategic use cases are minimal.
- Packaging applications (like App-V), while previously used, might be refocused toward layering.
- Using cloud-based technologies as a bridge to migrate from aging on-prem app and desktop deployments is a possible way to fit most use cases.
Hybrid app and desktop delivery in Frame allows you to accomplish this easily, while decreasing the traditional on-prem fear of cost of entry since you pay only for what you use as you scale. You can build upon your current foundation with previous technologies and, with Frame, you can fully realize what you wanted to do with both internal and external use cases. It’s that easy. At least, that’s the way it should have been all along.
A special thank you and kudos to the team of Mark Plettenberg and Ruben Spruijt, the featured authors of http://vdilikeapro.com . Without you, we would not have the data which inspired this blog post. Excellent work, gentlemen!
