Connect from any device and get mobility, security, compliance with reduced TCO

What is Virtual Desktop?

Think of a “Virtual Desktop” as quite comparable to your familiar PC, minus the hardware. Virtual Desktops are stored in a Datacentre and you can connect to them from any device.

The virtual desktop is then presented as if it’s running locally on your device.  “Virtual apps” is when you display just the application window on the device, and not the whole Windows Desktop.

You could say Virtual Desktops are like “Dumb Terminals on steroids” because all the processing is still done on a physical server in the Datacentre, but now you can remotely use all the features of all that Virtual Desktop.

VMware Horizon and Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops are the market leading Virtual Desktop products.

What are the benefits of Virtual Desktops?

Mobility: You can access the desktop from anywhere and the experience is the same, once you get onto the desktop.

Security & Compliance: As apps are located in the Datacentre, it is generally easier for organisations to secure company data.

Management: It’s simpler to deploy apps to and patch thousands of virtual desktops, versus physical desktops.

Reduced TCO: the total cost of managing VDI at scale is significantly lower than physical desktops.

What is VMware Horizon or Citrix?

Horizon is a family of desktop and application virtualisation solutions from VMware that allows organisation to simplify and automate the management of virtual desktops.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is the equivalent product from Citrix. Both are market leaders and in recent years both almost have feature parity.

Most organisations will have a preference for one or the other, but depending on which you choose you may be able to gain certain additional features/integrations.

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