Desktops as a Service: Everything You Need to Know About DaaS & Hosted VDI

Whether you call it Desktops as a Service (DaaS), hosted VDI, or desktops in the cloud, everyone knows that the idea of outsourcing your Windows desktops and applications to service providers is a hot topic for companies today. Amazon has just launched AWS WorkSpaces, VMware bought Desktone, Citrix has 2600+ cloud service providers (CSPs), and dinCloud, TuCloud, and countless others are now offering DaaS services.

These DaaS providers make all sorts of sensational claims about the benefits of moving your Windows desktops to the cloud. “Save money!” “Outsource your troubles!” “Simplify your Windows desktop management!” “Solve your BYOD challenges!” But are any of these true?

Ultimately you just want to know whether you should take the plunge with DaaS, and if so, what you need to look out for and how to succeed.

This is what world-famous desktop virtualization analysts and bloggers Brian Madden and Gabe Knuth (the duo behind BrianMadden.com and BriForum) set out to do in this book. They’ve written it for the reader who’s been charged with “figuring out DaaS.” (Probably via a scenario in which your boss cornered you in the hallway and said, “Hey! What’s this DaaS thing all about. You’re in charge of figuring out whether we should do it!”) That’s where this book comes in.

In writing this book, Brian and Gabe interviewed dozens of people who work as DaaS providers, consultants, and end customers. They talked to people who love DaaS and who hate it, to people who are succeeding with DaaS and to people who have tried it and given up. The asked DaaS providers to share their war stories and for advice they’d give to potential customers.

This book is not a head-to-head comparison of DaaS providers. Instead, it gives you the key facts you need to know about DaaS. It digs into the various technologies you need to understand by answering questions about how you handle networking, security, server placement, disk image management, application management, user authentication, and mobile devices. It examines what exactly you need to consider when evaluating potential DaaS platforms and providers, how you pick a provider to trust, what to look for in an SLA, and how you build a solid plan for migrating to (and exiting from) the most appropriate DaaS provider.

The book ends with a massive list of 204 “must answer” questions you need to understand about your own environment and that you need ask your DaaS provider before starting your migration. It condenses their years of desktop virtualization, VDI, Citrix, and VMware experience into a single easily-readable volume. You get the benefit of their year of DaaS research, testing, and experimentation in a book you can read in an afternoon.

So whether you’re thinking about DaaS, whether you’re trying to avoid it, or whether you’re on the fence, this book is for you!

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to DaaS
2. The Promise (and Reality) of VDI
3. How to Succeed with VDI
4. Bringing in DaaS
5. Advantages of DaaS
6. Disadvantages and Challenges of DaaS
7. Use Cases for DaaS
8. Licensing :(
9. The True Cost of DaaS
10. How to Pick a Windows Platform
11. Desktop and Image Management
12. Data Location and the Network
13. Security
14. Client Devices and BYOD
15. How to Pick a DaaS Solution
16. Migrating to DaaS
17. Quitting DaaS
18. Alternatives to DaaS
19. The Future of Windows and DaaS
20. 204 Questions You Need to Answer Before Migrating to DaaS

BRIAN MADDEN is known throughout the world as an opinionated, super technical, fiercely-independent desktop virtualization expert. He's written several books and over 2,000 articles about VDI and desktop virtualization. His blog, BrianMadden.com, receives millions of visitors per year and is a leading source for conversation, debate, and discourse about the application and desktop virtualization industry. Brian is also the creator of BriForum, the premier independent application delivery technical conference.

GABE KNUTH, known as the other guy at BrianMadden.com, has been in the desktop delivery space for 17 years, and has seen the industry evolve from the one-trick pony of Terminal Services to the application and desktop virtualization (and Daas!) of today. Having spent most of his IT career as a consultant, Gabe's focus tends to lean more toward practical, real-world technology in the industry, essentially boiling off the hype and reducing solutions to their usefulness in today's corporate environments. In addition to his blogs, Gabe is the co-creator of BriForum and can be seen speaking at events around the world.