The use of cloud infrastructure for apps and services of every type continues to grow. According to the IDG 2020 Cloud Computing Study, 92% of organizations are using the cloud and 55% are using multiple cloud services. The same study forecasts a 50% increase in the use of software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings over the next 18 months. This is not surprising, because cloud services provide important benefits. They are efficient, since you pay only for what you use. Cloud and SaaS providers also take many of the mundane, repetitive and low-value tasks off the IT team’s plate. And cloud services can be deployed in hours, not the weeks or months it can take with on-premises infrastructure.
When the focus moves to desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) and digital workspaces, the benefits from cloud services or SaaS solutions are even more impressive. To start, cloud services provide the reliability and persistency that DaaS needs to avoid downtime, which can result in hundreds or thousands of workers becoming idle. Cloud also provides effectively ubiquitous access to the digital workspace or DaaS for employees, simplifying connections to the platform.
Then there’s scalability; with the cloud or SaaS, a growing user population or substantial increases in the size of data sets used will not impact service levels or cause frustration with slow response times. Cost efficiency is enhanced, since the impetus for organizations to overbuild on-premises infrastructure to meet peak demands or user growth is eliminated. With the cloud or SaaS, it is also possible to have geographically distributed instances without paying more. Based on the alignment of cloud service benefits and the demands of digital workspace platforms, it’s quite clear that cloud is often the optimal solution for companies to leverage both agility and the increasingly rapid pace of innovation.
Deploying DaaS or digital workspaces using cloud or SaaS also improves the employee experience. One of the most notable improvements is that there is far less friction when using the solution, so employees can better focus on the task at hand. A cloud/SaaS strategy also makes data, applications and access ubiquitous, and that makes supporting remote or hybrid workstyles far simpler. It is also worth noting that network access speeds across multiple locations may be better from a cloud supplier than a company’s own WAN. Eliminating network bottlenecks improves performance, a key factor in a positive digital employee experience.
“Where and how work gets done has completely changed. But one thing has not: Employees need a consistent work experience that allows them to do their best work,” says Matt Lull, managing director of cloud innovation partners at Citrix. “Now more than ever, it is critical that we allow our customers to get work done safely and securely, wherever they happen to be.”
The combination of this solution and cloud/SaaS infrastructure also delivers several important advantages to IT teams. It can let the cloud service provider (CSP) focus on low-value tasks such as patching, updating or doing operational management while the in-house staff focuses on what matters most: optimizing the use of IT resources. The pressure on IT is reduced, since the CSP provides new features and upgrades faster than many internal IT teams can, mostly due to the dedicated resources the CSP provides for its digital workspace or its DaaS SaaS offering. Using cloud to offload much of the operational overhead from IT allows the IT team to give a higher priority to enhancing the functionality and capabilities of the platform to increase its value to employees. This is possible only when day-to-day tasks aren’t taking up all the IT Ops team’s time.
The benefits from moving workloads to the cloud are well understood, but companywide solutions such as DaaS or digital workspaces are particularly well suited to being hosted in the cloud. For many firms, a public cloud service can provide faster time to solution and the ability to leverage a deployment that is already up and operational, making it a compelling option. And the cost certainty of cloud means the need for additional IT infrastructure won’t blow up budgets.
Citrix’s leading solutions for both DaaS and workspaces are proven on all major cloud service providers. Citrix works closely with CSPs to ensure that both IT and employees have a seamless and friction-free experience. How you can leverage cloud services and Citrix’s market leading solutions for both DaaS and digital workspace? Learn more about delivering cloud-hosted virtual desktops to any device, from anywhere, for your business and team now.
