White Paper from Unidesk Shows How to Cost-Justify Virtual Desktops, Make VDI the Easy Choice over Buying More PCs

A free white paper from Unidesk Corporation available at https://www.unidesk.com/opex-white-paper shows how Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) projects can now be justified through real operational cost savings. Until recently, broad VDI adoption has been stalled by high capital costs and management complexity, despite the compelling security, mobility, and device flexibility advantages of centralizing desktops on data center servers. “Desktop OpEx Savings: the Key to Cost-Justifying VDI” explains how new desktop layering technology designed specifically for VDI changes the economics, and makes replacing more PCs with Citrix® XenDesktop®, VMware View™ and other VDI brokering platforms an easy choice.

The white paper takes an in-depth look at the costs of Microsoft Windows® gold image management, application delivery, and desktop support within physical PC environments, typical VDI environments, and VDI environments managed by Unidesk® management software for VDI. The findings show that physical PCs are very expensive to manage on an annual basis, while typical VDI reduces operational costs, but not enough to offset the capital costs of additional infrastructure. Unidesk, however, gives VDI the clear cost advantage over buying new PCs.

Using per incident desktop support costs from industry analyst Gartner® and other standard metrics, the white paper shows how annual desktop OpEx for 500 desktops can be reduced from an estimated $187,940 in a physical PC environment to $118,400 in a typical VDI environment, to a low of just $22,880 in a Unidesk-managed VDI environment. The white paper findings are substantiated by customer profiles on the State of Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities, the City of Kent, Wash., and Menlo College. Also included are the formulae used to derive the findings, so IT professionals can calculate their own savings based on their unique cost models and experiences.

“It’s well-known that physical PCs have a high TCO, but our customers continuously tell us they have trouble building the business case for VDI,” said Tom Rose, Unidesk Chief Marketing Officer. “Through this white paper, IT professionals will learn how to calculate how much time they’re really spending on Patch Tuesday, application delivery, and desktop support. Then, they’ll see how to translate efficiency improvements in each of these areas into real cost savings that will make it much easier for them to cost-justify their VDI projects.”

With desktop layering technology, Unidesk-managed VDI eliminates the root causes of gold image proliferation, so IT administrators only have a single gold image of Microsoft Windows to patch and update on every “Patch Tuesday,” regardless of how different their desktops are, or how many desktop pools they have. Packaging applications with Unidesk is markedly faster and simpler than virtualizing applications or using legacy electronic software distribution tools, making application delivery much more efficient. Finally, more desktop support calls can be remediated through end user self-service or Level 1 technical support in a Unidesk-managed VDI environment, eliminating escalations to costlier Level 2 and 3 IT staff resources.

To learn how to quantify the OpEx savings potential of Unidesk-managed VDI, download “Desktop OpEx Savings: the Key to Cost-Justifying VDI” at https://www.unidesk.com/opex-white-paper.

About Unidesk
Unidesk Corporation (www.unidesk.com) enables customers to centralize more desktops on data center servers and realize the full potential of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Unidesk® desktop management software for VDI is the easiest way to create, patch, personalize, and support VMware vSphere-hosted desktops and deliver applications for organizations with diverse user requirements. By using Unidesk’s patent-pending desktop layering technology with Citrix® XenDesktop®, VMware View™ and other VDI access solutions, customers can expand VDI to more users, reduce desktop operations costs up to 30%, cut VDI storage costs up to 70%, and foster a more productive, agile workforce. Unidesk Corp. is a privately-held company with headquarters in Marlborough, Mass, USA