Out of the Box vs. Optimized: Upgrade With Azure Virtual Desktop Managed Service
Best Practices
The way we work is in flux and businesses are bearing the brunt of this change. Organizations are now scrambling to develop forever-remote working strategies — not just stop-gap measures — that can scale with their workforces and keep costs low.
In the face of change, many businesses have turned to Azure Virtual Desktop (formerly Windows Virtual Desktop). As part of a public cloud strategy, Azure Virtual Desktop reduces total cost of ownership compared to on-premise infrastructure and accelerates VDI deployment.
With Azure Virtual Desktop, organizations have the tools they need to navigate hybrid work as local regulations, employee sentiment and workplace strategies continue to change. However, while Azure Virtual Desktop works out of the box, it can be challenging to optimize a VDI solution for your unique business needs.
When you have an Azure managed service provider on your side, you can build infrastructure that fits your team’s needs and grows with you. See how an Azure expert can help you streamline cloud migration, maintain security standards and level up Azure scalability.
The potential and pitfalls of self-managed Azure Virtual Desktop
When Azure Virtual Desktop launched in 2018, industry insiders recognized its value — but no one could have predicted the critical role it would play during the global pandemic. Over the last three years, Microsoft has continued growing its Azure Virtual Desktop, providing:
- Cost optimization: Because Azure Virtual Desktop operates on the public cloud, it offers the ability to scale on demand, so you are never paying for more than what you need.
- Complete flexibility: Beyond cost, Azure Virtual Desktop is quick to implement, making M&A processes and user onboarding tasks seamless.
- Secure management: By building a VDI solution on top of Azure, you can ensure your infrastructure maintains your existing security standards by providing access control and multi-factor identification.
Despite these out-of-the-box benefits, most organizations lack the resources to scale or optimize a VDI solution for their enterprise needs. Without prior VDI experience or an Azure Virtual Desktop background, you might incur unnecessary costs or be unable to take full advantage of the platform.
Even if you have internal Azure expertise and can take on cloud migration and management tasks alone, VDI management is a separate competency that your business must invest in.
As the environment evolves, your team might also experience VDI complexity they cannot manage without additional training and resources. So, if VDI management is not an ongoing focus, this investment can fail to deliver business value.
The power of an Azure Virtual Desktop partner
Rather than making you optimize Azure Virtual Desktop internally, a managed service provider builds a sophisticated service layer on top of an already powerful platform. For highly regulated sectors or businesses managing constant change, an MSP helps you create a strategy for specialized workloads.
With a partner to help you optimize Azure Virtual Desktop, you can:
Level up Azure scalability
Introduce dynamic scaling capabilities and optimize your resource availability with an expert partner like Ensono. By leveraging automation tools through Nerdio, Ensono simplifies scaling across different regions, user types and more. This means you keep costs at the lowest possible level without limiting availability, giving your employees 24/7 access to the tools they need.
Maintain security standards
Ensure your assets are protected, no matter where your employees are located. Remote work now means work from anywhere, which opens up company computers to threats from unknown Wi-Fi connections, personal device usage and more. Ensono secures your VDI assets while managing regular security updates and patching, app updates and Microsoft updates.
Simplify migration
Make it easier to migrate or build applications on top of your virtual platform. A managed Azure expert knows the challenges that can arise as businesses vet and deploy Azure Virtual Desktop, so you stay one step ahead as you set up your VDI solution. At Ensono, our decades of VDI expertise informs your migration strategy, allowing you to easily move to your ideal state.
Ensono as your managed Azure Virtual Desktop partner
When you work with an Azure Virtual Desktop managed service provider, your team can focus on business objectives — not VDI management. Ensono’s expertise helps superpower your Azure Virtual Desktop environment so your employees are more connected, costs are scaled to what you need and data is more secure.
We use our 20 years of VDI expertise to design and implement integration, security and cost solutions that work for your team’s goals. Whether you are migrating heritage assets or setting up a bring-your-own-device program, we work with you to build strategies for whatever comes next.
In addition to our tools and resources, our longstanding relationship with Microsoft helps you reduce upfront VDI costs. Not only does Microsoft fund your proof of concept from Ensono, but you can also access user licensing at no extra cost on select Microsoft 365 plans.
Contact Ensono to learn more about Azure Virtual Desktop managed services and our proof of concept.