Delivering desktops as a service
Delivering desktops as a service (DaaS) is a common approach to simplifying desktop delivery, reducing administrative overheads, and enabling flexible work models. DaaS offers flexibility when choosing an OS and underlying hardware specifications, enabling a wide variety of use cases with a pay-as-you-go pricing model and the freedom to alter the hardware specifications, if required. DaaS can also help improve your security posture by storing sensitive data on the virtual desktop instead of user devices or by simplifying access to network resources on-premises, in the cloud, or on the public Internet. In a corporate environment, DaaS can enable free seating by providing access to your personal virtual desktop from a desk using an inexpensive access device, like a thin client. Contrary to an application delivery scenario, a DaaS user can be given permission to install their own software and tooling on their personal virtual desktop.
With DaaS, applications can be pre-installed in your golden image or pushed to the virtual desktop using a desktop management suite. Users may also have access to a software center to install pre-packed applications in a self-service fashion. Application layering and application containerization can alternatively be used to run applications without the need for installation (for example, from a simple network share). DaaS can be combined with application virtualization to decouple applications with special hardware requirements from a virtual desktop with more common hardware specifications.
Common Amazon WorkSpaces Service deployment scenarios
The DaaS delivery model addresses many of the problems associated with providing desktops and applications to corporate users, customers and business partners. The following scenarios outline some key areas where a service-oriented approach to desktop delivery provides many advantages.
Scenario 1: Reducing costs and realizing the CapEx to OpEx shift
User scenario: We need to move away from upgrading, maintaining and periodically replacing the hardware required to our own EUC infrastructure. The costs of maintaining an on-premises data center, resilient infrastructure, and disaster recovery capabilities are growing, and we need to keep deploying more hardware to stay ahead of current technology trends.
With pay-as-you-go pricing, you can use services like Amazon WorkSpaces to move from a CapEx oriented model to a more OpEx oriented model, compared to an on-premises VDI environment. Planning demand can be difficult, and the ability to provision and decommission desktops when you choose means you can avoid sourcing new hardware and software licenses. It also helps reduce idle capacity that you might be forced to build out only for specific projects or seasonal business. You can save cost with VDI backend infrastructure, but you may also benefit from reduced cost or an extended lifecycle of your users' devices, since this model may require less powerful hardware at the user's desk when all it does is access a desktop as a service.
Scenario 2: Protecting and using the value of existing investments
User scenario: I have an existing on-premises EUC infrastructure which is still licensed and needs to remain in place for some time. How can I reduce my desktop delivery overheads while embracing new cloud-based desktop delivery services?
If you have an existing desktop virtualization infrastructure on-premises and are looking to extend this into the cloud for peak usage or migrate part or all of this into the cloud, Amazon WorkSpaces Core can help you with this effort. Using APIs to the Amazon WorkSpaces services, Amazon WorkSpaces Core allows third-party desktop virtualization software such as VMware Horizon, Citrix DaaS, Workspot, and Leostream to be integrated with Amazon WorkSpaces.
Scenario 3: Reducing complexity
User scenario: The day-to-day overheads of managing, administering and supporting my on-premises EUC estate are considerable. How can we avoid some of the more challenging aspects of maintaining a complex desktop delivery infrastructure?
Standing up and maintaining an on-premises desktop virtualization environment can be challenging and requires knowledge and skilled staff in several different areas. A fully managed service like Amazon WorkSpaces takes a lot of this complexity away, leaving you with a significantly reduced number of tasks your IT staff has to deal with. The freed-up resources can be assigned to other projects where they can contribute more directly to your business goals.
Scenario 4: Increased availability
User scenario: Adding and maintaining resilience for our desktop delivery infrastructure requires additional hardware and investment in expert staffing to maintain. How can we improve service delivery and reliability without significant additional capital investment?
The complexity of traditional self-managed desktop
virtualization environments can impact the reliability and
availability of the service you are providing to your users.
Service interruptions and downtime may result in reduced user
and customer satisfaction, productivity losses, and eventually
financial losses. The Amazon WorkSpaces service comes with a
service-level
agreement (SLA)
Scenario 5: Cost optimization for business continuity
User scenario: The overheads of deploying and managing a secondary site for disaster recovery is prohibitive. How can we provide the level of continuity our business requires without adding cost and complexity?
Maintaining a standby deployment for your desktop virtualization environment can be a costly and labor-intensive effort. Amazon WorkSpaces comes with built-in features such as multi-Region replication that keep your users online and productive during disruptive events, all while optimizing the cost of building a redundant, cloud-based virtual desktop environment across multiple Regions and reducing the administrative burden of maintaining such an environment.
Scenario 6: Improved security
User scenario: Our data and intellectual property are difficult to control, and it is hard to meet our industry compliance requirements. However, our users need the flexibility to access their data while on the move, using laptops, desktops, and mobile devices.
Using a service like Amazon WorkSpaces can give you better control over where your users process and store their data. For example, you may decide to allow access to certain backend services (like file servers or databases) from your Amazon WorkSpaces only. Or you may block users from copying data to their local devices. You might also consider placing an Amazon WorkSpaces Thin Client at the user's desk, which does not even have any local storage to store data. With Amazon WorkSpaces, both the execution of applications and the storage of data your users need can be centralized, regardless of employee location or the devices used for access.
Scenario 7: Enhanced flexibility to support the modern workforce
User scenario: It's costly and time-consuming to manage the replacement of old hardware, accommodating new devices, or providing compute capacity and the tools required to allow seasonal workers to staff key events.
With a service like Amazon WorkSpaces, you can change the compute type (bundle) and storage size as required throughout its lifecycle with minimal effort, helping you avoid the physical hardware upgrades and administrative and management overheads associated with a legacy laptop and PC estate.
When your business has to deal with seasonal peaks, the ability to provision and decommission new desktops with a service like Amazon WorkSpaces avoids the need to purchase new hardware and licenses that would otherwise sit unused in the cabinet during off-peak periods.
Scenario 8: Supporting mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures
User scenario: Our business is thriving and regularly acquires new businesses or divests legacy business units as our portfolio evolves. Onboarding employees from new companies and enabling them to quickly become productive by providing them with our applications and services takes significant time. Can we simplify this process?
If you are acquiring a new business or divesting a part of your business, you can often face the challenge of diverse and incoherent IT environments while having to provide access to certain applications and data across the merged businesses or retaining access to certain applications and data for employees of a divested business. A service like Amazon WorkSpaces can be used temporarily or permanently to provide granular access to the specific required applications and data in an isolated environment.
Scenario 9: Simplification of the desktop refresh cycle
User scenario: We are planning a desktop refresh to roll out a new OS, and we need to replace a significant proportion of our laptops and desktops to meet the device requirements of this upgrade. Is there a better approach that avoids the need for hardware refreshes or upgrades when the devices are out of support or when operating system and applications demand more resources?
During a desktop refresh with a new OS, for example when moving from Microsoft Windows 10 to Microsoft Windows 11, you can use services like Amazon WorkSpaces to temporarily set up additional WorkSpaces for evaluation and testing of the new environment until you're ready to roll out the new version.
Scenario 10: Supporting a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategy
User scenario: How can we offer employees, contractors, or business partners the option of using their own devices to access our applications and data? This would simplify our access model and reduce the complexity of issuing, managing and replacing company owned hardware.
If you would like to offer your users the option to bring their own device, the Amazon WorkSpaces services can support this model. The WorkSpaces compute instance is hosted in the cloud, your data can remain in the cloud, and users can use a native client or browser to access these resources remotely, using a secure, high performance remoting protocol.
Scenario 11: Supporting compute-intensive workloads
User scenario: We have a number of contractors who occasionally need access to high performance, graphics-enabled machines to complete development work on our behalf. How can we avoid purchasing costly, high-end hardware to enable this sporadic use case?
Some of your workloads may have above-normal hardware requirements. Running CPU, RAM, or GPU-intensive workloads on the end-point can be extremely expensive and inefficient due to the cost of the device itself, as the device may sit under-utilized most of the time. Amazon WorkSpaces can provision these resources on demand, if and when they are required.
Scenario 12: Supporting cloud migrations and data center exit
User scenario: We have migrated several of our on-premises services to the cloud and are finding that some of our desktop applications are performing more slowly than they were before the migration. We believe that the latency between the desktops and the new cloud environment is causing these problems.
When migrating data and backend applications to the cloud, think about proximity requirements. For example, consider where the client applications are located that process this data or interact with the backend applications, both pre- and post-migration. The new location of data and backend applications may introduce increased network latency or reduced network throughput, which in turn may require bringing your client applications closer to the data and backend. When migrating to the AWS Cloud, services like Amazon WorkSpaces can bring your client applications closer to the data and backend applications now residing in the AWS Cloud.
