In the New Year, IT budget planning is a priority for business leaders. The pandemic has propelled the adoption of remote work, prompting many companies to invest in new IT solutions or expand existing IT solutions to stay afloat. While some decisions were initially seen as temporary, many companies have found that employees are actually more productive in a remote work environment, and IT teams are rethinking their approach to end-user computing to address the long term.
Companies across industries have accelerated their digital transformation to meet evolving employee demands for flexible work styles. In fact, 76% agree it helps them recruit and retain top talent from a competitive global pool. As enterprises continue to support remote working, legacy technologies such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) will be superseded.
For business leaders looking for reliable, secure, and scalable solutions to enable remote access to critical business resources, three key cloud computing trends will need to be considered:
1. The days of on-premises VDI are over
If the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that to thrive, businesses must be prepared to adapt. As a result, cloud transformation is on the rise, with 83% of IT leaders reporting that cloud strategies have been extended or accelerated due to remote working. Agility requires an IT architecture designed for a modern enterprise, designed to scale quickly and easily in response to change.
Just as the film industry has evolved from VCRs and DVDs to online streaming services, so is VDI evolving from on-premises and DIY desktops to cloud-native SaaS infrastructures. As it becomes increasingly clear that traditional VDIs and physical PCs cannot meet today’s demands for security, performance, scalability and reliability, IT managers are now turning to IT solutions cloud-native for end users.
Physical desktops and virtual desktops using on-premises VDI present major challenges for IT staff. The complexity of each approach prevents instant scalability, which delays end-user productivity and complicates cross-site collaboration. In addition, these approaches are expensive. Expensive hardware refresh cycles are required to access technology updates, and resource-intensive VDI management, troubleshooting, and maintenance aren’t viable for most organizations.
Businesses in all industries are deploying cloud PCs to provide their business with the scalability and cost-effectiveness needed to maintain a competitive advantage. Replacing traditional resource access with a cloud PC ensures secure, high-performance access from any device or browser, protecting end-user computing so organizations are prepared for the next technological wave or commercial upheavals.
2. Hybrid and multi-cloud strategies are the future
In a recent survey, 90% of IT decision makers indicated that multi-cloud strategies work for their businesses. Since migrating to the cloud is a time and labor intensive investment, many organizations are making the change incrementally, which means that at some level they are still operating with their legacy investments – for example on-premises data centers.
A flexible cloud PC solution with multi-cloud and hybrid capabilities enables a smooth transition from on-premises data center to cloud. But to reap the benefits, tHere are several points to consider when developing an effective multi-cloud budget strategy: The first is to define the characteristics of each workload moving to the cloud. Next, budgets should be allocated per project so that each workload can be optimized, across multiple dimensions, separately. Finally, selecting the right cloud provider for each project is imperative, as each public cloud has unique strengths and weaknesses. as well as variable cost structures.
With these considerations in mind, companies can decipher specific logistics – for example, whether cloud consumption should be billed by the hour or by the year depending on the use case. To make informed decisions in these scenarios, project managers, finance, and product teams must align with future business goals, while deeply understanding the specifics of each project and workload.
3. Cloud PCs serve as a modern “insurance plan” for ransomware recovery
The average cost of a ransomware attack is $4.5 million, but that doesn’t take into account the most detrimental consequence: total loss of productivity. Shutting down workplace operations to investigate and stabilize the attack surface is not only costly financially, but also damaging to brand reputation.
Business continuity requires companies to go beyond prevention by developing a strategy recovery plan. In this context, cloud PCs serve as a modern “insurance plan” for ransomware recovery, allowing employees to get back to work while IT managers investigate and mitigate the damage.
According to a Sophos report, the average time it takes to remediate a ransomware attack is 30 days, which means an entire month of downtime could cost up to $10 million in lost productivity for a 1 000 people is not unusual. Cloud PCs allow business leaders to operate with peace of mind knowing they can provide secure access so people can get back to work, within an hour or so of an attack to keep business going. Given the scale of the threat landscape today, the cost of securing a fleet of standby cloud PCs pales in comparison to the financial risk of more than 30 days of downtime.
Prepare your business for 2023 and beyond
In 2023, companies have important decisions to make to ensure their competitiveness in an ever-changing business world. As remote and hybrid working grow in popularity, the adoption of technologies that prioritize agile and secure end-user computing will also increase. Cloud PCs support the continued evolution of hybrid work environments, creating a “permanent” and scalable IT infrastructure.