Why Azure Virtual Desktop Now Leads the Pack on VDI
For years, organisations needing virtual desktops picked Citrix or VMware Horizon (now Omnissa). However, according to the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service (DaaS), Microsoft has now overtaken these leaders, thanks to its two cloud-based virtual desktop offerings: Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365.
Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is a highly configurable VDI service, where you pay for resources allocated. Windows 365 is the less configurable off-the-shelf version where you pay per user.
Microsoft was judged by Gartner to be the desktop-as-a-service provider with the greatest ‘completeness of vision’ and ‘ability to execute.’
However, Citrix and Omnissa were still classed as leaders, alongside AWS, and they continue to serve complex or highly regulated needs.
Microsoft’s DaaS offerings have become the most popular choice for organisations that want the benefits of VDI, without the operational complexity of traditional VDI implementations.
Azure Virtual Desktop: Why It Has Become the Desktop-as-a-Service Standard
Microsoft’s been steadily improving AVD since 2019, when it was known as Windows Virtual Desktop. Microsoft now supports more virtual desktops worldwide than any other DaaS provider, with customer satisfaction scores and analyst accolades to match.
This is partly due to Microsoft’s hard work and partly due to rivals dropping the ball.
Microsoft’s transitioned from being just a software publisher to becoming one of the world’s largest cloud services providers. It showed itself to be technically competent, enterprise-friendly, and willing to invest to improve its services.
Meanwhile, certain virtual desktop technology providers took customers for granted. Following private-equity takeovers, they raised prices, forced customers to buy product bundles, reduced direct support and in some cases, reduced R&D.
This frustrated customers, many of whom shared their dissatisfaction with Gartner.
Unmatched Scalability, Reach and Resilience
AVD runs on Azure, a hyperscale cloud, hosted in over twenty countries, including the UK. Azure hosts in 60 ‘regions’, including UK South, UK West, and North Europe (Ireland).
Whether your priority is latency, data residency, regulatory compliance, or simply capacity at short notice, Azure provides a breadth and depth few cloud VDI providers can match.
Underpinning AVD is a global network, geographically dispersed data centres with robust physical security, redundant power and resilient connectivity, plus 24×7 monitoring and support.
Azure’s connectivity is a particular advantage, with fast, direct paths to Microsoft 365 apps, OneDrive, SharePoint, Exchange Online, and Azure-hosted applications.
For organisations with international operations, Azure’s ability to set up virtual desktop hosts in multiple countries is attractive – improving responsiveness for users and simplifying legal compliance with data protection laws.
Security and Compliance Without the Drama
AVD, and its simplified off-the-shelf version – Windows 365, benefits from Microsoft employing one of the world’s largest, most sophisticated cybersecurity defence teams. They have unparalleled awareness of digital threats thanks to Microsoft serving so many high-profile targets.
Microsoft holds a wide range of security certifications, and its security logging and monitoring are deeply integrated into its cloud services. This integration enables detection of attacks that might go unnoticed with traditional, in-house VDI.
AVD can integrate with most Identity and Access Management solutions, including Entra ID and Active Directory, allowing virtual desktops to be protected by multi-factor authentication and role-based access control. Access can also be restricted based on device compliance and IP addresses.
When it comes to sustainability, AVD and Windows 365 are doing their bit to reduce subscribers’ scope 3 carbon emissions. Microsoft has been carbon neutral since 2012, and is committed to being carbon negative and water positive by 2030.
Flexibility and Cost Control
AVD supports multi-session Windows 10/11 Enterprise capability, allowing multiple users to have their own sessions while sharing the resources of a single Azure VM.
This lets firms deliver VDI using fewer but larger VMs. This aggregation of demand improves utilisation levels while reducing costs in comparison to most cloud VDI services that operate a mandatory single-session-per-VM paradigm.
AVD on-demand instances are charged by the minute, rather than the hour, and when not in use, there’s no hibernation charge, and no per-user fixed fees unless you opt for Windows 365. You can combine reserved instances, scheduled capacity, and on-demand autoscaling, trimming costs while ensuring resources are ready when needed.
Operationally, AVD supports multiple monitors and high-resolution displays, and can be tailored to your Windows image, application, scaling and geographic preferences. Applications can be attached dynamically (“app attach”), giving different users the apps they need without causing VM images to proliferate.
Reliability and User Experience
Uptime is monitored 24/7, with Microsoft providing round-the-clock platform support. This means incidents can be addressed even while your IT team is unavailable
User experience is optimised, with support for Teams and Zoom traffic redirection, so audio and video calls are more responsive than in traditional VDI setups that force such traffic to be hairpinned through the VDI host.
New virtual desktops can be spun up in minutes, allowing staff and contractors to get to work without undue delay.
AVD Is Intuitive, Especially with the Right Partner
AVD is designed to be accessible for the average IT professional, requiring less provider-specific expertise than Citrix.
Microsoft 365 E3/E5, and similar licences, confer Windows rights for AVD, simplifying software licensing.
Azure’s VDI Rivals: Strong, but Outmanoeuvred
Citrix, Omnissa, and AWS Workspaces all have their strengths.
Citrix excels in ultra-complex, multi-cloud, hybrid deployments and customisation, but this comes at the cost of complexity and expense. Small and medium-sized firms may need to go to channel partners for Citrix support, following recent strategic shifts. Contractual inflexibility and rapid product consolidation may put off some customers.
Omnissa is refocusing after its demerger from Broadcom and a private equity takeover. This has left some customers feeling uncertain around support and investment.
AWS is highly credible, excellent at scalability, and well trusted, but lacks AVD’s multi-session Windows capability. Its on-demand service is less granular, with billing by the hour rather than by the minute. Unlike Azure, there are hibernation charges on non-reserved VDI instances and less integration with the Microsoft 365 stack.
All three fail to match Microsoft in vision and execution, according to Gartner’s 2024 Magic Quadrant report on Desktop-as-a-Service offerings.
AVD Management: Why Most Organisations Need More Than Just Azure
The one challenge for AVD: while typically more cost-effective than Microsoft’s per-user-per-month VDI offering (Windows 365), AVD can require more day-to-day administration. Forrester found that managing AVD natively requires about one full-time IT employee per 414 users—versus one for every 685 on Windows 365.
For organisations managing AVD via standard tools such as Azure portal, the operational savings of AVD can be lost unless internal IT management costs can be minimised to allow simpler, quicker management and cost optimisation.
This is where Syntura comes in.
How Syntura Makes AVD Effortless, and Cost-Optimised
Microsoft partner Syntura bridges the management gap. With our consultancy, support, and advanced VDI management portal, you can capture the benefits of AVD without needing deep Azure expertise in-house.
You decide how much management you want to do in-house and leave us to do the rest.
Our VDI management portal, built using Azure APIs, gives you control. It brings intuitive image management, automated patching, application management, and rightsizing tools into a single pane of glass, so there’s no more wrestling with multiple dashboards and scripts.
Autoscaling can be orchestrated dynamically to trim costs. Reporting tools help with sizing, performance optimisation, and offer spend attribution down to department or user level. Robust reporting and role-based access control means you can empower your own team or let us co-manage the setup.
Provisioning desktops, patching, managing apps, and resetting sessions are streamlined, freeing your IT team to focus less on IT drudgery and more on higher-value tasks.
This is not just about convenience and rapid provisioning. By making AVD more manageable and using automation to reduce costs, organisations can reduce total cost of ownership, giving AVD a cost advantage over Windows 365.
Syntura: Experts That Make AVD Work Even Better
Syntura doesn’t just provide an Azure VDI management portal and leave you to figure things out. We guide you through the entire journey: discovery, scoping, building the business case, sizing and costing; running pilot projects and arranging phased migrations.
We can integrate your existing identity-management system with your new cloud-based VDI, update security settings, set up autoscaling, file shares and printers. We can also ensure ongoing performance monitoring and optimisation, patching and proactive cost management.
You decide how hands-on you want to be: take full control via our portal, delegate routine management to us, or pick something in between. Need help with a Windows 10 to 11 migration? We’ve got the expertise. Want to turn Microsoft Teams into your company’s phone system? We can help with that too.
Perhaps you’d like to trial AVD and Windows 365 in parallel to see which you prefer, and validate sizing, performance and cost estimates before committing? We’ll deliver a tailored pilot and a phased rollout, de-risking your transition to desktop-as-a-service.
Our networking pedigree ensures we have the skills to investigate any voice or video streaming issues you might encounter. We’re also able to tune your solution to your requirements, so you can mix reserved and spot instances, and keep costs down through multi-session concurrency and autoscaling, while maintaining desktop performance.
We’re audited for compliance with ISO 9001 and 27001, Cyber Essentials Plus certified and trusted by clients in many regulated industries, including healthcare, legal services and financial services.
Time to Take Advantage of Azure Virtual Desktop
Azure Virtual Desktop has evolved into the most flexible, scalable, and cost-effective desktop-as-a-service offering on the market, backed by one of the world’s top cloud providers.
AVD has gradually overtaken the offerings of the traditional VDI leaders with the help of Microsoft’s technical competence, Azure’s global footprint, industrial scale security measures, enterprise-focused services and solid value for money.
With Syntura’s help, Microsoft’s cloud VDI offerings become even better, with easier provisioning, management and cost optimisation, so your desktop infrastructure stops being a burden and starts to deliver a competitive advantage.
If you’d like to learn more about Azure Virtual Desktop and see whether it might be right for your organisation, get in touch with Syntura. You can reach us on +44 (0)20 7847 4510, fill in our contact form, or email us at info@syntura.io .