Remote work can introduce security and user experience challenges for an organization. This is especially true if an organization has a BYOD policy that permits employees or contractors to work from a range of personal devices. These devices may not be capable of supporting corporate applications and run the risk of data breaches if workers download sensitive company data to them. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Desktop as a Service (DaaS) have long been adopted as a solution to this problem, enabling workers to remotely access desktops hosted in the corporate data center or cloud. However, these legacy solutions come with a cost.

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Where VDIs/DaaS Falls Short

The main appeal of VDI/DaaS is that they allow an organization to maintain control over the data and applications used by remote workers. The virtualized desktops are hosted within the corporate network, and employees or contractors remotely work from them. However, this approach to securing remote work comes at a significant cost to the user experience for remote employees and contractors. These solutions are complex to configure, operate, and manage, which can create an inconsistent user experience. Also, the high bandwidth requirements of providing remote access to a complete virtualized desktop environment can introduce latency or make it impossible for workers with low-bandwidth connections to effectively access corporate applications.

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VDI/DaaS also have indirect impacts on the user experience as well. Often, these technologies are expensive and require significant resources to manage. If IT budget and personnel are tied up keeping the organization’s VDI/DaaS infrastructure operational, they aren’t available to address other challenges faced by an organization’s in-house and remote workers.

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The Business Impacts of VDI/DaaS Challenges

VDI and DaaS have significant shortcomings that harm the user experience of the remote worker. The usability and availability issues of these solutions can have numerous impacts on the business, including the following:

• Lost Productivity: If VDI and DaaS solutions experience lag or render corporate applications inaccessible, then workers can’t do their jobs. This lost productivity can have significant financial impacts on the business and may harm brand image and relationships with customers, partners, and suppliers.
• Decreased Employee Engagement: VDI/DaaS solutions can create friction for workers attempting to perform their roles. This can result in decreased employee engagement and additional losses in productivity if workers simply give up on attempting to do their job because the company’s IT infrastructure makes it so difficult.
• Damaged Morale: If an organization’s VDI/DaaS infrastructure is laggy and unreliable, it can create the perception that IT can’t effectively support modern work practices. This can cause friction between the IT department and the rest of the organization and may cause workers to seek out employers that appear more supportive of remote work.
• Shadow IT: VDI/DaaS are designed to improve an organization’s cybersecurity by keeping corporate data and applications on systems under the organization’s control. If these solutions do not work, workers may begin using unapproved alternatives that can result in data loss or other negative effects.
• Opportunity Cost: VDI/DaaS infrastructure is expensive to acquire, manage, and maintain. With IT/security budget and personnel tied up in VDI/DaaS, the organization loses the opportunity to use these resources in other ways that might offer significant benefits to the business.

Simplify and Streamline Remote Work with Sonet

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VDI and DaaS are legacy solutions to the challenges of remote work. Their clunkiness, poor user experience, and high overhead requirements can cost the business money, productivity, and skilled personnel. Sonet.io provides a modern alternative to VDI/DaaS that enables workers to remotely access corporate apps and servers using only a browser. After browsing to the Sonet.io web app, workers have access to corporate resources without the unnecessary overhead of a hosted desktop. Sonet.io also integrates with corporate SSO solutions, enabling users to easily authenticate and access the tools that they need.

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Sonet.io also improves the user experience by eliminating the complexity of managing VDI/DaaS infrastructure. IT and security employees can manage policies and implement zero-trust controls via an intuitive web-based dashboard. Sonet.io also offers session recording to support incident response, compliance, and troubleshooting efforts. VDI/DaaS is a remote work solution created before remote work became a core component of many modern businesses. To see the future of secure remote work, get started with Sonet in just 15 minutes today.

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