Implementing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has become one of the highest priorities in the “work from home” era. In fact, according to a survey from Spiceworks, 69% percent of companies over 1,000 employees have or are implementing VDI for their end user computing environments in 2021. That compares to 50% in 2020.
Why such a rapid rise in adoption? Certainly, the move towards remote work has played a pivotal role. Managing remote users with greater efficiency, control and security (as data and applications never leave the data center) is much easier with a virtual desktop VDI strategy. But it’s not the only contributor to this rapid VDI shift. The need to lower overall end user computing (EUC) support costs and better managed IT budgets is also playing a significant role.
Resolving Technical Problems is Consuming IT Budgets
A Deloitte study recently found that as much as 80% of IT’s time is spent resolving problems, rather than pro-actively working on the strategic priorities IT needs to be focused on. Adding to that, 81% of IT budgets are spent on maintaining technology enterprises already own - maintaining it, managing it, upgrading it and troubleshooting it. That leaves a measly 19% for those innovations and technological advances that can truly move the business forward. With this small sliver of budget for critical new technology investments - such as digital transformations, automation, even broader security strategies - how can organizations ever get ahead? Consider the stats in this infographic.
IT Skills Gaps Exacerbate the Challenge
The IT dilemma doesn’t stop there. Compounding the budget conundrum is the costly skills gaps that continue to impact IT teams. It’s dreadfully difficult to find and retain talent for critical path projects from security to networking to desktop virtualization. And this ongoing challenge continues to worsen. Global Knowledge found that this skills gap problem is actually costing companies as much as $22,000 per year, per employee. And globally, this skills gap issue has increased by 155% in three years.
For companies that are adopting VDI, this skills burden had been particularly heavy. Indeed finds that the average annual salary for a VDI Engineer is $132,954 and Career Builder has 47,521 job openings listed. Check out this infographic for more VDI hiring stats. That’s a lot of companies competing for the same skilled workers! There’s gotta be a better way!
Lowering Costs with VDI HCI
One way IT is able to lighten the load is through the adoption of VDI based on a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). By integrating everything IT needs for VDI in one consolidated hardware solution, companies can slash deployment costs, lower management expense and lighten the load on IT staff all while giving users the high-performance user experience they need.
In fact, ESG Research reports that to accelerate business transformation companies are quickly migrating workloads to HCI. Why? HCI reduces the requirement for server and storage management resources and expertise and are actually the foundation for many digital transformation initiatives. Their research found that 87% of IT managers said that HCI made IT more agile, and 25% stated HCI makes IT significantly more agile.
VDI is a perfect place to start, or accelerate, the HCI journey. Because doing it on your own can be complex and tedious - integrating it into one simplified HCI solution can dramatically cut the need for management and integration expertise.
At Whitehat Virtual, we’re making VDI HCI even better. In fact, it can be “easy as pie.” Our Titanium HCI solution is simple, VDI appliance-based solution that will deliver Citrix or VMware VDI for LIFE. It comes complete with Zero Effort, Zero Cost Upgrades™ in a self-contained hyperconverged appliance. And to reduce the need for VDI staff expertise it also comes with lifetime management so IT teams can get back to other top strategic projects.
Let us show you how cost effective and simple VDI can be. Schedule a demo.
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