Why Use Azure Virtual Desktop?

Want to power up your remote work? Azure Virtual Desktop can help. Azure Virtual Desktop is a full desktop solution on the cloud — a desktop-as-a-service kit that enables employees to work as though they’re in the office from anywhere. Azure Virtual Desktop is similar but not the same as using Azure for Remote Desktop Services, enabling smoother and easier transitions to on-the-go work. 

So, why should you adopt Azure VDI? 

What Is Azure Virtual Desktop?

Azure Desktop as a Service provides a desktop on the cloud. From anywhere, an employee can connect to the organization resources in Azure or on prem through a VPN or Express Route. Users can access their desktop, complete with the documents, files and applications that they need to continue their work, providing the same look and feel from different devices. 

Companies can use Azure Windows Virtual Desktop to provide services to both in-house employees and remote employees. Employees can work from anywhere as though they’re in the office. Many companies are now operating either remotely or with flextime, as this lets them reduce their overhead and improve their operations. 

The Benefits of Azure Virtual Desktop

Azure Virtual Desktop is a cloud-based desktop virtualization service that allows users to access their applications and data from anywhere, on any device. Azure Virtual Desktop provides a cost-effective way for organizations to deliver a secure, high-performance desktop experience to their employees, without the need for on-premises infrastructure. 

Azure Virtual Desktop offers many benefits over remote solutions, including: 

• The ability to scale on demand. Virtual desktops can scale up or down as needed to meet changing user demands. There is no need to overprovision capacity or worry about underutilized resources. 
• An affordable, pay-as-you-go business model. With Azure technology, you only pay for what you use. There is no upfront investment required, and you can cancel at any time. You can leverage bring your own device policies throughout your organization to go remote. 
• High-performance deployments. Azure provides a high-performance desktop experience to users, with support for 4K resolution and multi-monitor displays. This is a far cry from the grainy, low-resolution connection that once characterized remote desktops in the past. 
• Extensive features. Azure Virtual Desktop has a wide array of fantastic features that make life easier, such as media optimization with Microsoft Teams, and providing an all-in-one management portal. 

• Security. Azure uses Azure Active Directory and can integrate Azure multi-factor authentication to provide a secure login experience for users. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, ensuring that it is safe from unauthorized access. In the past, many third-party remote desktop solutions or remote work solutions relied upon the employee to secure them. This required employees to do things like managing their own VPNs, which was largely untenable. 
• Compliance. Azure Virtual Desktop meets all major compliance standards, including HIPAA, PCI DSS and GDPR. Compliance standards rapidly change, and organizations may need to change their technology and protocols to suit them. But Azure Virtual Desktop reduces some of the compliance burden by handling all these issues automatically. 
• Reliability. Azure Virtual Desktop is built on the Azure platform, which delivers 99.9% uptime for mission-critical workloads. Azure is a reliable and scalable system. 
• Extensibility. Azure Virtual Desktop is part of the overall Azure ecosystem, which includes a multitude of solutions that organizations today can use to operate remotely. 

Virtual Desktop is a great solution for organizations that need a flexible, scalable desktop virtualization solution that is easy to deploy and manage. but that’s not to say there aren’t some complexities with adoption. 

The Challenges of Azure Virtual Desktop

Despite the many benefits of AVD, there are a few challenges that need to be considered. Largely, these challenges can be mitigated through the help of an MSP. 

• User experience. Azure Virtual Desktop is a cloud-based service, which can result in latency and other performance issues for users. This is especially true for users who are located far from an Azure data center. However, remote workers are starting to get savvy to the fact that they need reliable internet services and to be located near a data pipeline for the best results. 
• Application compatibility. Not all applications are compatible with Azure. Organizations need to carefully test their applications before deploying them, especially any inter-application integrations. An MSP can audit your organization’s current tech stack to ensure that all of the principal components are supported by Azure. 

• Cost. As with many pay-as-you-go cloud services, Azure can be more expensive than other desktop virtualization solutions if not managed properly, depending on the number of users and the level of performance required. When it comes to cloud expenses, they can seem inscrutable and difficult to control. An MSP can also conduct a financial audit to ensure that you aren’t paying for services that your organization doesn’t need. 

Despite these challenges, Azure Virtual Desktop is a powerful desktop virtualization solution that can provide many benefits for organizations. This is especially true if your organization already leans heavily on the Azure technology stack. 

Setup Your Azure Virtual Desktop Installation with an MSP

Red River can help your organization integrate the Azure Virtual Desktop solution into your current technology stack—and save money while doing so. Red River is a Microsoft Azure Partner, with skilled experts available to audit your existing systems and ease your technology transitions.

Azure Virtual Desktop is part of Red River’s Remote Virtual Assist solutions. Contact Red River today to learn more about how organizations can innovate without disruption.