Shortly after VMware acquired Desktone, Amazon announced plans to leverage its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure to offer Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solutions. With two of the most prominent cloud computing leaders now backing DaaS, the decision Dell Cloud Client Computing made in 2011 to launch of our comprehensive enterprise DaaS solution has proved itself to be the right direction!
WorkSpaces is Amazon’s push to serve the growing customer demand to outsource the infrastructure and management of their desktops to a cloud solution provider. While the service is not available yet, we looked at the details released and have conducted a first-pass analysis.
As one of the first innovators in the enterprise DaaS space, Dell has collected some important insights that are being applied as best practices in our DaaS engagements. There are basic functionality requirements customers expect including scalability, security, easy provisioning and management of virtual desktops, but also customers express widespread desire for:
- The ability to choose between persistent and pooled desktop options. Several use cases, including call centers, are better served by non-persistent environments as a way to reduce management and protect corporate information.
- The ability to leverage Dell services organization and tap into our expertise in desktop virtualization which has been accumulated over years of direct experience with many customer deployments. Through an end to end services portfolio Dell drive three core outcomes: SIMPLIFY the transformation and management of (physical to) virtual desktop environments. Provide customers FASTER paths to deploying VDI, and Accelerate customer’s business outcomes with pre-engineered end-to-end solutions.
- The ability to access different types of desktop virtualization. VDI is not the only desktop virtualization option. Despite the fact that VDI is very popular as it mirrors the physical desktop environment, many customers are looking for the flexibility of simple app virtualization or app streaming solutions. Dell provides a range of options to fit customer needs and designs DaaS solutions aligned with unique workloads which include VDI and other choices.
- The option to deploy custom DaaS environments. For instance some customers have prescriptive requirements about the location of sensitive data or special allocation of storage and CPU resources. Security and data privacy are critical concerns to most of our DaaS customers and Dell DaaS stores user data in a customer defined location not restricted to the cloud. This customization is difficult to achieve in the less-flexible AWS offering.
Competition will help to accelerate adoption of DaaS. We welcome new entrants and are proud to have led the way by establishing a host of best practices and compelling service offerings since 2011. The Amazon WorkSpaces initiative validates Dell’s leadership and direction. We have developed significant expertise and a strong position in the desktop virtualization space and will continue to offer DaaS as part of our Cloud Client Computing portfolio, which also includes a wide selection of end-to-end on-premises solutions including DVS based on Dell Enterprise infrastructure and the highly acclaimed Dell VRTX shared infrastructure platform, Dell Wyse thin clients, Dell Enterprise Services and virtualization software.
