DaaS MARKET REPORT
“When utilised correctly, technologies like Virtualisation can remove barriers to flexible working and empower
employees previously restricted to a single, on-premise device.” Pete Watson, CEO, Atlas Cloud
Citrix Managed Desktops
(CMD) can be switched o
and easily as they’re switched
on when hosted on Azure –
meaning you can treat DaaS
as a Business Continuity as a
Service approach, if you wish.
Pay only when you use it!”
Adding value
e o the shelf products
customers can buy straight
from the big vendors may suit
a smaller business with some
in-house IT knowledge but the
partner channel is there to serve
and support customers with
DaaS requirements they simply
can’t get anywhere else.
Watson commented,
“Collaborating with partners
allows businesses to innovate
their solutions to clients and
prospects. With the support
of specialist partners, hosted
desktops solutions can be made
ultra-secure, highly performant
and very reliable, delivering
the di erence for customers.
Working with partners can also
give companies that competitive
advantage and can allow them
to keep in control with minimal
e ort.
ere are also signi cant
exibility advantages. Often,
partnering with a managed
service provider means that
there is no capital outlay and
minimal responsibility for the
implementation, billing and
ongoing support and remote
management.”
DaaS vs VDI
As with any as-a-service offering, organisations may opt for
managed DaaS to avoid the cost and hassle of building and
maintaining their own VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) offering,
particularly if they are small businesses with limited in-house
resources or budget. DaaS is also useful when the customer
needs to easily scale the number of users up or down – in busy or
seasonal periods, for example.
VDI and DaaS have been an important a part of outsourced
corporate helpdesk services offered by enterprise partners for a
long time. Whether it be with vendors like Amazon, Citrix, Microsoft,
VMware or others, some form of managed desktop will always be
of use to organisations for a variety of reasons, either due to cost,
strategy, logistics, or partner expertise.
If a customer is a large corporate entity and needs to outsource
its desktop management to a partner, there is clearly value in
having someone take some of the headache away and perform
that completely independently or in conjunction with the internal
IT team. In that case the diffi culty of confi guring and running an
enterprise environment was a good value-add and VDI was the
solution.
For smaller businesses DaaS can be of use, particularly if
partners are combining the deployment and confi guration of PCs
and software to that business with IT asset disposal services or
going even further and developing a refurbishment business.
ED SAYS…
Managed services can be a great way for partners to feel confi dent in offering
support on niche areas, such as security, working more collaboratively both with
companies such as Microsoft or Citrix, as well as with their customers. Surely with
the surge in uptake in applications like Teams it makes sense for partners to see
where else they can add value around the desktop. In this increasingly remote
environment customers are going to need their trusted advisors more than ever.
If partners don’t lead that conversation then the big tech vendors will do so either
directly through their huge marketing budgets or through partners that have
embraced their wider technology stack.
Key Players in DaaS
• IBM
• Google
• Amazon
• Tucloud
• Cisco
• Vmware
• Oracle
• Leostream
• Solidfi re
• Apps4Rent
• Xenserver
• Citrix
• Microsoft
• Dincloud
• Computers Support
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