The beauty of private cloud goes beyond return on investment (ROI). The benefits are evident in the case of Desktop as a Service (DaaS), which is changing the rules of the game for my workforce at YES Bank.
DaaS, also called virtual desktop or hosted desktop services, is the outsourcing of a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to a third party service provider. Typically, DaaS has a multi-tenancy architecture and the service is purchased on a subscription basis.
In this delivery model, the service provider manages the back-end responsibilities of data storage, backup, security and upgrades. The customer's personal data is copied to and from the virtual desktop during logon/logoff and access to the desktop is device, location and network independent.
With DaaS in place, we can do three shifts without giving additional desktops. People can work from home. They can also work on mobile phones without IT having to worry too much about creating mobile applications.
Our employees are able to access their desktops in a secure way, almost as if they would do it in the comfort of their office. Also, if they bring their own devices, we don't have to incur the cost of desktops, laptops or even phones.
As data is centrally stored, employees can access it even if their desktops crash. So the work does not get affected. There is a full recovery available. The bandwidth is lesser. The overall management in terms of upgrades, changing the software, hardware, and anti-virus is centralized.
Another benefit of DaaS is linked to energy saving. One desktop consumes around 160 watts of power, while the thin client takes around 10 watts. So you are talking of a 1 unit of energy saved per desktop every day. Also, you can reduce the installed capacity of the air conditioners, which results in additional energy saving.
To run DaaS at YES Bank, we have roped in a partner. There will be four configurations - Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum, which means there will be four levels of desktops, which will be allocated to different sets of people. And on top of that there will be some value added services as well. Overall, there are immense benefits of DaaS, and YES Bank is taking the lead.
Fantastic initiative from cost saving and employee experience perspective. Much greener and efficient with high uptime. Also may have the capability from getting accessed from variety of devices. It should also provide details on security features as well to prevent misuse.
Minor nitpick: but you may wish to check your acronyms. ‘DaaS’ is generally accepted as “Data as a Service”, not “Desktop as a Service”.
See, for example, Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataasa_Service ), or the Wall Street Journal ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125071202052143965.html ) for reference.
As you mentioned, Desktop as a Service is usually referred to as merely another flavor of VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). It’s hard to keep up with all these acronyms without a scorecard, though.
Sexton, you may be right in your explanation but I think there can be two explanations to this. It could be a merely another flavor of VDI (which indeed it is) but the DaaS is also accepted as Desktop as a Service (http://searchvirtualdesktop.techtarget.com/definition/desktop-as-a-service-DaaS) check the above link.
DaaS can be excellent and anything that gives workers more flexibility to do their job well is in keeping with my philosophy of Information Age Management.
What bothers me is that there are existing, cheap, reliable methods to getting these same benefits. Working from home (easy peasy), having multiple users use one computer (puh-lease), and employees using their own devices to access network resources (x-windows, VNC, ssh, etc. etc. etc.) So the expenses incurred with DaaS are probably not worthwhile for small or medium-size businesses with a competent sysadmin on staff. But as you scale to large number of employees, DaaS great and probably works out better financially.
Just be sure to follow the advice in my book (and elsewhere on the ‘net) for choosing vendors and SaaS providers. Making sure your data is also backed-up locally, ensuring the company’s privacy and data-retention policies are in-line with your own, and a few other things will prevent headaches later on.
While I do see the benefits of DaaS, my company is working towards the same approach with a different spin. While the public “cloud” does have its benefits, I feel more comfortable with creating a DaaS model that’s kept 100% in house. This way we know where all the data is, and don’t have to depend on a third party with potential lapses in data security.
Upfront costs are a serious consideration, but if implemented successfully you’d see cost savings on the support side (BSOD, laptop crashes, deleted files that aren’t backed up).
Yes, a security breach could happen with everything kept in house, but I’d sleep better at night knowing where my data is, and who has access to it.
While this doesn’t work for everyone, if you have the means to implement and support an internal DaaS model, I believe this is the way to tackle the challenge.
To reply on the above: In a recent survey the top 3 drivers for going towards VDI or DaaS are:
3 - TCO, 2 - security, 1 - BYOD flexibility
To tackle your remark (thus expanding on #2), the security risks from internal users is a lot higher then anything from the outside (Cisco study showed 1 on 10 employees doing it).
Especially Tier 3+ datacenters will pretty much exclude physical access and doing the access security right will any loss through USB sticks, mailing or trojans.
I agree you can build a service yourselves - but then what flexibility: how to gauge how many users to support, do you want to get involved in another IT activity in your company, do you want to invest the large CapEx for the needed infrastructure? Most companies will find that doesn;t make sense - do you still host your own mailservices as well?
A good initiative and seems to have worked well. The benefits are real, over and above the financial feasibility. This can be a good model to emulate.
One point I would like to clarify - DaaS in our scheme of things has many flavors and VDi is one of them. The comprehensive list is as follows
a. Thick client desktop/laptop (part of DaaS) b. Hosted shared desktop (by giving away v little flexibility - you cut down on major costs) c. VDi - traditional virtual desktop d. Thin client using Windows lite etc.
To me DaaS is more a commercial and contractual construct in an outsourcing arrangement- and will be more successful if bundled along with following other outsourcing items like a. Printing and Scanning (photocopy/fax etc too) b. Network (end to end with) c. Network file storage d. Maybe mail application also