Feature: Revealing the big tech VDI illusion

By Tim Whiteley, Co-Founder of Inevidesk.

As almost every organisation is well embedded in the Microsoft environment, Azure is generally the obvious solution to consider for cloud-based VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) resources. In many cases, other options won’t even be considered as the Microsoft mindset tends to rule and, of course, Azure is a key product for many channel partners.

At first glance this seems like the sensible choice: keep everything within the MS environment, take advantage of dynamic scaling, and only pay for what you use. This is much of the fundamental promise of cloud computing and Microsoft has positioned Azure well to reap much of that demand. The scalability of VDI is very appealing in today’s constantly changing and challenging world.

But don’t be too quick to go down that route unless you have ensured that this service will be fit for purpose and not destroy your customer’s budget. An inappropriate solution – and too much trust in one brand – could significantly upset your customers and destroy an otherwise carefully cultivated relationship.

The key is ensuring maintained, or improved performance, demonstrating clear ROI (which will likely be more than a straight bottom-line comparison) and preventing the unexpected end-of-month billing that comes in multiple times higher than anticipated: that awful moment when it becomes apparent that your team has put in more than the average hours and requires much more than the hopeful, over-provisioned resources determined at the outset.

There have been increasing stories recently of companies migrating away from the public cloud to reduce costs and better guarantee performance. And that will often mean jumping away from their channel partner at the same time. This is something we’d all like to prevent.

The allure of dynamic public cloud VDI

Dynamic resources sound ideal. Only pay for the services you use. Drawdown additional resources whenever you need them, but only for as long as you need them. Always scale in line with your business needs. Manage it all under OpEx and avoid the unnecessary accumulation of CapEx hardware that you might only need for six months. It sounds more cost-efficient. It sounds more sustainable.

And if it sounds like magic, then it is. Because to provide dynamic resources, the public cloud vendor must have pre-provisioned large amounts of hardware to be ‘available’ for dynamically scaling customers. Much of that equipment won’t be in use for much of the time; sitting on standby, losing value. To be profitable, the use of that equipment needs to be priced high and be over-provisioned.

In addition, to ensure profitability, this equipment will remain in use for a long time, meaning customers are often offered base components that are years old and off the pace for ever more demanding workloads.

This can leave many organisations paying much more while being much less performant. This is further compounded by times when resources might not even be available (through outage or over-provisioning), adding downtime to the increasing list of woes.

This is not to say that there is no place for Azure VDI. It may well prove cost-efficient for those with low compute requirements or those who have specific, time-limited projects. But for organisations that have demanding requirements, with users who work long hours and have stable core employee numbers and workloads, it is likely to be a poor choice.

Overcoming cost and performance barriers

Unfortunately, this – together with historically expensive big tech offerings – has given VDI a bad name for those organisations with demanding GPU and compute requirements. Performance does not meet the promise and frankly, it’s just too expensive anyway.

This is a real shame, as VDI genuinely does offer what the (post-pandemic) world needs now. And there are vendors out there who offer services that provide the performance, agility and cutting-edge hardware at a cost level that can demonstrate clear ROI in well-thought-through, holistic strategies.

Totally dynamic? No – but that is rarely needed. Instead, these vendors can offer high-level, core VDI resources that can scale up and down at the edge to provide a solution that is both cost-efficient and scalable. Bypassing the public cloud and big tech players allows the benefits of VDI to finally, truly shine – even for organisations within the AEC and video industries who have previously been restricted to fixed-place physical workstations. These solutions can be deployed on-premises, in your own data centre or in a hosted private cloud.

Increasing numbers of organisations are taking this route, whether jumping out of big tech player solutions or as a straight transition from physical workstations. These VDI disrupters are not as visible as they should be, lacking the reach of big tech, but they are becoming better known – a secret shared, for those who make the effort to look.

Looking beyond the obvious

Ensuring an awareness of the available options beyond the big tech offerings and understanding which are most appropriate for your customer is key. Getting these decisions wrong can be crippling, especially in today’s uncertain economy and with IT spending forecasts continuing to grow. Blind trust in Microsoft solutions and generalists is an attitude that can seriously undermine a business and relations with its reseller partners.

Instead, customers need to look to channel partners with wide multi-industry-specific experience, who have undertaken the relevant research and have a genuine array of options. Of course, these conditions allow them to provide the information necessary to forecast spending and guarantee performance levels. Effectively, a partner who is curious and invested in research will ensure that they continue to offer best-fit solutions for specific use cases.

Spread the risk

 The recent global outage of Microsoft services caused by CrowdStrike, followed quickly by a global Azure outage, demonstrates very clearly the risk of vendor dominance in any market. The best way to mitigate this is to invest in a wider range of tech and support smaller, innovative vendors alongside the big players. This leads to a healthier, more varied environment – much better equipped to respond to cyber disasters, which now pose an existential risk to most businesses and the global economy. This is a good way to better protect your customers and your channel business in the long run and should have prominence alongside cost, performance and sustainability when assessing solutions.

Invest in innovation

 Ultimately, this is a shout-out to channel partners to spend some time and effort identifying and engaging with the start-ups and scale-ups, the innovators still plugged into their industries, that provide better-fit solutions than big tech and public cloud providers.