Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020. Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Jason E. Smith, VP Product Marketing, Liquidware
Ready or not, Desktops are Going Cloud, and Cloud Staging will Increase
Major organizations will continue to adopt cloud hosted Windows desktops in
2020, and it's no longer a matter of "if" but "when" that will happen. The leading
enabling platforms - Amazon WorkSpaces, Microsoft WVD, and Nutanix Xi Frame -
are now mature enough, and the use cases now are too prevalent, for massive
desktop cloud adoption not to happen. 2020 will continue to see large customers
adopt these platforms, as well as Citrix and VMware cloud desktop
transformations.
The question you need to ask yourself right now is, "Is my
organization's Windows desktop enterprise ready for the shift?"
Let's be clear, not all desktops will be good candidates for
cloud hosted desktops this year but many clear uses cases are obvious
candidates for these emerging desktops. Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst for Cloud,
Mobility and Security at Enterprise Strategy Group echoed similar thoughts with
me just this week on a call saying, "VDI
Deployments that have been used for specific use case will be the first
desktops to move to a cloud model." In particular, the easiest use cases are
adopting cloud desktops first, such as call centers and task worker type use
cases.
Just like VDI,
additional use cases will follow, including knowledge worker type jobs.
Knowledge worker adoption is exactly where the cloud hosted desktops will see
exponential adoption.
What's your Plan for 2020?
The reality of this
movement to cloud hosted Windows desktops is that you need to have your
organization ready. Even if your current desktops are performing great and you
are seeing good ROI, you need to be poised to take advantage of the innovation
that cloud desktops deliver. In 2019 Liquidware saw many of its customers start
leveraging Microsoft Azure, Amazon, or Google cloud storage with their current
on-prem environments. With innovative support of cloud and object-based storage
embedded in Liquidware's adaptive desktop management suite, transitions of user
centric data and apps are completely automated. Liquidware's suite can be
leveraged to "Cloud Stage" smart user profiles, user authored data, and can
become a central hosting point for user experience data, making it easy to
transition your organization's most important desktop and workspace data to the
cloud.
Cloud Staging - what is it? How can I
leverage it in 2020 and beyond?
The act of Cloud Staging is simply readying your organization
to make a seamless switch to cloud-hosted desktop. You can start by hosting your data and,
perhaps, some or all of your on-prem desktop data in the cloud. Once you have
leveraged the cloud as the backbone of your organization's desktop storage,
you'll be ready for a one-click transformation to cloud desktops at any time in
the future. In
this demo you'll see a user logging off their legacy desktop and immediately
logging onto their Microsoft WVD multi-session desktop on Microsoft Azure.
Liquidware makes this easy with object-based storage of user
profiles and applications as well as synchronization of user authored data to OneDrive,
Dropbox, or Amazon WorkDocs. Once your on-prem virtual and physical desktop
users are under management with Liquidware's adaptive workspace suite, you have
everything you need to flip the switch for a seamless user transition to cloud
desktops.
While many customers may not be ready to jump fully into
cloud based desktops in 2020, many will be ready to host user profiles, user
data, applications, and user experience metrics in the cloud. Liquidware is
doing exactly this with customers every week now. Liquidware is also the only
organization to provide support for object-based storage across the three major
clouds - Microsoft Azure, Amazon, and Google.
When you invoke Cloud Staging with cloud centric storage,
and best practices with Liquidware's adaptive workspace management suite, you
are ensuring your organization is ready for whatever desktop transformation
lies ahead in 2020 and beyond.
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About the Author
Jason E. Smith is VP
of Product Marketing for Liquidware and has worked in the virtual desktop and
Windows management market for more than 20 years.