Seeing the two terms- VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and DaaS (Desktop-as-a-Service) -being used nearly interchangeably in the literature, may get you a little confused about what the differences are between the two. In this article, we would like to help the reader understand the advantages and disadvantages of these solutions when compared to each other.

Deploying your desktop applications from a centralized location improves the performance of your desktop environment, regardless of where and how it is managed. VDI and DaaS are both revolutionary for their advanced technology, which ultimately aims at increasing the availability and reliability of virtual desktops. But what are the things that set them apart from the perspective of a client, looking into these two virtual desktop alternatives for their business?

Similarities Between VDI and DaaS

There are some obvious similarities between VDI and DaaS based on the type of service they offer to clients. Virtual desktops, which can be accessed remotely at endpoint devices, are what you receive with both solutions for a start. Another main similarity between them is how quickly and easily you can scale up your operations with either of them, in case you need to add more workstations for new employees joining your company.

What are the differences between the two?

 

  • INFRASTRUCTURE

VDI can easily be separated from DaaS in terms of how the server is set up either in a cloud data center or on-premises.  In both cases, there is an IT team that is taking care of the whole desktop virtualization process from start to end. This includes the hardware setup design and the entire development, management, and maintenance of the infrastructure. Looking after the whole virtual desktop architecture every day of the week for the rest of time is a big commitment that also takes a certain amount of expertise most companies fall short of. DaaS on the other hand can only be hosted on cloud servers that are managed externally round the clock by IT specialists like we-IT. The main difference between DaaS and VDI is that the first one does not require any long-term obligation as you pay a subscription fee to your third-party vendor, based on how many desktop seats you decide to lease. This way you are devoid of all troubles with setting up your own servers and maintaining them by using the service of experienced (and often expensive) IT teams in-house.

  • COST AND COMMITMENT  

We already mentioned the higher cost and commitment that come with VDI compared to DaaS. It is no secret that this is one of the main considerations for businesses that decide to go one or the other way. Deploying virtual desktops from company servers requires substantial capital investment for starters, and this is certainly not to everyone’s pocket. There also comes the consideration of keeping your infrastructure up-to-date with the latest patches and upgrades, which add quite some extra costs at the end of each month. Desktop-as-a-Service resolves these high capital expenditure problems by giving you the chance to outsource the whole infrastructure of your provider as well as their management and monitoring services. This means that even companies of small sizes can afford to use virtualized desktops and operate remotely, without having to overpay for expensive hardware equipment and staffing. Moving to the cloud is also a painless process that is handled by your service providers over a rather short space of time.

  • LOCATION

The remoteness of your company data from your end users is another key difference and consideration when looking at DaaS and VDI. If you have a team that is scattered over various geographical locations, not close to each other, then you ought to consider DaaS over VDI. Cloud desktop solutions by third-party providers are great for companies that want to rely on a highly available desktop environment, which is deployed from multiple server locations, rather than a single centralized one. This ensures that you have a reliable service hosted in a data center that is the nearest to your endpoint devices.On-premise technology like VDI limits users by deploying virtual desktops only to locations that are relatively close to your employees and their physical devices. we-IT has a wide range of data centers worldwide so your desktop environment is guaranteed to be highly available and reliable for each and every customer and their employees.

  • FLEXIBILITY

Virtual desktops are here to help companies improve their productivity and the security of their operations. This is why companies need to be able to rely on solutions like DaaS, which offer great flexibility with managing your workload and delegating responsibilities to new employees, without suffering high costs or substantial efforts. Desktop-as-a-Service allows you to be more agile with adding new tenants and relying on a highly available and secure desktop service at every endpoint device of your users.

Final words

To conclude our short comparison article on VDI and DaaS, we must say that these are both highly advanced solutions that can help businesses grow while operating remotely. Nevertheless, it’s clear that DaaS has some outstripping characteristics such as lower costs, lesser commitment, and higher availability, than its competitor VDI. At the end of the day, what most companies want is to rely on a service without having to spend too much time, effort, or money on expensive infrastructure or lifelong maintenance at a rather high cost!