Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) offerings have been around for a long while, but the post-pandemic hybrid work trend has breathed some excitement into a technology that’s been mostly niche until now. Unfortunately, the DaaS acronym is one you can run into in a number of software-as-a-service (SaaS) areas, like database-as-a-service or data-as-a-service. The desktop version is all about virtualizing your typical corporate PC. DaaS providers serve up desktops the same way cloud players like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure let their customers create virtual servers.
What is DaaS?
Using only software, DaaS customers can define how they want their desktops configured, the cloud services they want them to talk to, and the permissions or user roles needed to access them. That’s not a trivial list of features, and some services are a lot harder to set up than others. Once those initial setup chores are done, though, your employees will be able to log in to their corporate desktops the same way they’d log into any other web service, like GMail or a Salesforce CRM.
Upon login, they’ll see a fully configured desktop, but one that is running on a shared server in the DaaS provider’s data center somewhere. Well, mostly run there. To improve performance across the internet, most DaaS providers set up some level of local caching on the hardware with which users login most often, but this is minimal. For all intents and purposes, you’re using a desktop that’s virtual and actually running somewhere else.
DaaS is based on older technology, called virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), versions of which were developed by several vendors more than ten years ago. Citrix was one of the pioneers, though much of its technology was absorbed into Microsoft’s platform. VDI works the same as DaaS, except it’s meant to run in a customer’s data center. And while that customer’s employees can access a VDI desktop over the internet via VPN, the technology is intended to be used on a local area network rather than the web.
Newfound Popularity
Because DaaS services are built to run over the internet, the technology looks like a perfect solution for hybrid workers. That’s because IT professionals trying to run help desks during the pandemic found out they were facing an almost impossible task. When employees were in the office they were using PCs that IT had purchased and configured so they could be easily managed on-site. They were also built to use on-site network resources, like printers, network storage, and especially a business-class internet gateway.
Flip that to a pandemic landscape and IT pros suddenly found themselves managing bandwidth problems on a network they didn’t control (the interwebs) and using network hardware (those legions of home wireless routers) that they not only hadn’t purchased but also knew nothing about as far as management features were concerned.
And because so many businesses had already moved much of their software portfolios into the cloud as web services, like GMail, Microsoft 365, or Salesforce to name just a few, many users moved from their company-purchased hardware to their home PCs. After all, their company notebook had a much smaller screen and usually less horsepower than the multi-display gamer rigs they had at home. All they needed were their user names, passwords, and a web browser to get to most or even all the software they used during work, so why not?
Easy for the user, difficult for the IT pro, since now they had no management agent and no visibility into what else was running on those PCs. That included not just other software, but potential security problems, like malware the home user didn’t know was on their PC.
Combine all that, and most IT pros simply defaulted to making do without their usual management tools and solving one problem at a time, then going to bed and praying for the pandemic to end. That’s happening slowly, but to most IT pros’ dismay, the remote thing is sticking around in the form of hybrid work. Employees want the flexibility to work partially or even entirely from home on a permanent basis, and they want it in large numbers. One problem at a time isn’t going to work in that scenario.
Enter DaaS.
With DaaS, an IT pro gets all the management advantages of a corporate PC, but they can serve it up whenever and wherever their users like. Employees can log in on their company-owned notebooks or their home PCs and get a full Windows experience. Or they can log in using a modified, web browser interface on Apple macOS, iOS, or Google Android devices.
What makes IT happy is that now they control the PC again. Security and permissions, apps and services, patching and updates, it’s all in their domain once more. In fact, for many it’ll be even easier than before since now it’s all in software so management is easier to automate. If users want to use their home hardware, fine. IT doesn’t care what else is running on that PC, since their DaaS desktop is separated from the hardware layer on the PC and protected in a data center from any malware the home hardware might have. They also don’t care what other software users install on their personal hardware since they don’t need to support it. IT just puts together a white list of software that’ll be included in their DaaS desktops and if a user calls about something else, well sorry, that’s not on our list.
This doesn’t solve all of IT’s hybrid work problems, but it does solve a big chunk of them. The home router and bandwidth issues can still be problematic, but at least IT can focus on those now and leave their desktop problems in the hands of the DaaS vendor.
DaaS Considerations
But before you jump willy nilly into a DaaS contract, know that there are several issues and differentiators you need to take into account. The first is cost.
One of the things that hurt VDI was that it turned out to be much more costly than businesses had expected. VDI was supposed to save money, but instead, it could actually cost more money in the data center because the server versus virtual desktop ratio wasn’t as favorable as it looked on paper. That hurt, but the big issue was licensing.
Vendors like Microsoft sold VDI as a per-user license. Add to that a per-operating system (OS) Windows license, and then often a per-user software license, too, in the form of Office. So suddenly, the customer was hit with a whole other tier of per-user pricing above what they were paying in a dedicated hardware scenario.
DaaS has cost savings on its bill of benefits, too, and it can back that up, provided you’re careful about how you buy. If your DaaS vendor is operating in the old VDI model, meaning they’re only serving up the virtual desktop and not even the operating system, you’re going to pay through the nose. If they at least offer the OS as part of their per-user-per-month charge, that’s got a much better chance of being a cost saver.
The newest DaaS offerings, like the recently announced Microsoft Windows 365 Cloud PC, actually offer bundles that include the DaaS virtual desktop, the OS, and a Microsoft 365 app bundle all rolled into one monthly charge. Other vendors will follow suit, either with their own Microsoft 365 bundles or competing productivity suites, like Google Workspace or Zoho Docs. Do the math on that and factor in how much it’ll help you with hybrid work and then decide.
Your last cost consideration is that per-user-per-month charge. Most DaaS vendors use that format, but many also tack on a per-minute charge. So you’re paying $X per person per month, and then X cents per minute calculated by how long each of those users actually stays logged into their desktop. You’ll hear DaaS vendors say that this will save you money, since you’ll be able to spin desktops up and down depending on when your users need them, but it’s still an extra cost above and beyond the per-user price. You’ll need to come up with at least an average amount of time you expect each employee to be on their virtual desktops each month and factor that into your cost estimate.
Next, think about what you expect a “managed” service to do. If you’re looking to emulate a Slack experience, for example, then what you want is the ability to send the provider a list of user names so they can set up accounts and then work with a product rep to configure what you want those desktops to do. After that, you want your users to just log into their desktop and then wash your hands of any other management tasks outside of maybe seeing an all-up usage dashboard once a month.
Those services exist, but (a) they’ll probably cost more, and (b) they might be limited in what they can do on the back-end. That refers to things like integrating the desktops with your Active Directory identity management and group policies, for example.
The other side of the coin are vendors that offer loads of back-end options, but then expect you to set up and manage them. Those are players like Amazon WorkSpaces and Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop. Both of those platforms have loads of back-end integration options with their other cloud services, and they’ll certainly sell them to you while boosting those per-user-per-month charges. But setting up those complex services will be on you, or you’ll be paying a value-add partner to help. Then again, you’ll get total back-end flexibility, which might make the added costs worthwhile.
That all sounds like it’ll be problematic, especially for smaller businesses, but the math will check out for many companies. In particular, it’ll work for those smaller businesses because they’ll have a lower user count and easier back-end requirements. But even large companies are seeing DaaS’ advantages. For example, NEC recently announced it was moving all 110,000 of its employee desktops to the Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop platform both for additional performance as well as hybrid work considerations.
If a DaaS product sounds like it’s a good fit for your new normal needs, we’ve compiled a list of the top players in the DaaS market below.
