Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) has long promised better data security and streamlined management. Yet, it’s not pain free: with traditional VDI approaches, servers needed to be provisioned, there are lots of desktop images to manage, scaling can be fiddly, and costs can be significantly higher than with traditional local desktops.
However, a solution is at hand. Desktop-as-a-service offerings deliver the promised benefits of VDI while simultaneously leveraging the benefits of cloud computing, providing a smart way to modernise your desktops and enable secure hybrid working.
Advantages of Cloud-Hosted VDI
Cloud-hosted VDI fundamentally reshapes how desktops are provisioned, secured, and managed. Instead of maintaining on-premises hosts, gateways, and storage arrays, IT teams can rely on hyperscale cloud providers to deliver these capabilities as managed services.
This reduces physical IT hassles, frees up data centre space, cuts power consumption, and ensures you no longer need to worry about VDI server hardware refreshes.
Cloud-hosted platforms offer a switch to consumption-based costs. Instead of having to fund server-room hardware refreshes every few years, capital costs are covered by monthly usage charges, avoiding the financial hit of periodic fork-lift upgrades. The need to forecast IT demand in advance is significantly reduced. To a large extent, capacity planning becomes your cloud providers’ problem.
Auto-scaling host pools enable resources to be allocated dynamically—whether to support seasonal workloads, project-specific peaks, or compute-heavy work.
IT teams can optimise costs by cleverly combining cloud providers’ Reserved Instances, Scheduled Instances, and Spot Instances, taking advantage of autoscaling, and draining underutilised hosts.
Cloud VDI Can Simplify IT Operations
Many organisations still struggle with slow, manual IT provisioning processes and inconsistent desktop environments—especially when onboarding remote staff, contractors, or third-party suppliers that need access so they can provide technical support. Cloud VDI makes it easier to provide a more consistent desktop experience, rapidly and easily, with the help of virtualised desktops, image management tools, and automation.
Decoupling desktop sessions from endpoint hardware allows most patching, software installation, and software updates to be centrally managed. Those updates can be delivered in a timely fashion, even if some users’ devices are switched off for days or weeks at a time.
Standardising the desktop experience across platforms simplifies troubleshooting and eases user training. It also reduces software compatibilities. Mac users can use the same applications as everyone else.
Cloud-hosted VDI eliminates the need to preconfigure hardware centrally before re-shipping it overseas for globally distributed teams. Staff in other countries can use off-the-shelf devices to connect to centrally provisioned virtual desktops instead.
In the office, VDI enables hotdesking. Users no longer need to lug their laptop to the office; thin clients can provide access to personalised desktops from any available desk.
Your organisation may already be benefiting from cloud services such as Exchange Online, OneDrive, or SharePoint Online. Cloud VDI extends the convenience, scalability, and resilience of cloud services from specific applications to the desktop itself.
Cloud VDI Can Improve the User Experience
Users with demanding workloads—such as video editing, computer-aided design, or data analysis—can benefit from cloud instances that are GPU or memory optimised. These cloud desktops can run faster than physical desktops without requiring a hardware upgrade. Traditional VDI setups often struggle to economically justify dedicated hardware for such users. However, with cloud VDI, you can just rent the capacity you need, without buying a whole platform just for these users.
But it’s not just power users who benefit from VDI. Users with older or slower devices often find their desktop experience improves after switching to VDI. Because compute and memory resources are provided by the cloud, even lower-spec endpoints can experience responsive desktops.
The enhanced performance, consistent configuration, and centralised management provided by cloud VDI ultimately contribute to a smoother, faster, and more reliable user experience.
Encrypted VDI sessions reduce the need for complex VPN setups and always-on office desktops, simplifying remote access.
Security and Compliance at Scale
Cloud-hosted VDI gives you greater control over security than traditional desktops. Data remains in the cloud and is accessed within the virtual desktop session, significantly reducing risks from lost or stolen devices.
You control USB redirection, enabling you to block a common route for data exfiltration or apply granular controls, for example by having Microsoft Defender for Endpoint enforce your organisation’s data loss prevention policies.
You control the virtual desktop’s internet access, email filtering, and software installation permissions. These controls, alongside the USB restrictions, let your organisation significantly reduce the risk of malware infections and data leaks.
For organisations in regulated industries, cloud desktops help support compliance with required standards. You can lock down desktops, restrict internet use, enforce timely software updates, and apply geographic restrictions for data residency and processing.
Large cloud VDI providers hold a wide range of security certifications. Although these are not your own, they help demonstrate to customers, prospective customers, and insurers that your organisation takes security and compliance seriously.
Auditability is another benefit. Hyperscale cloud platforms provide detailed logging and role-based access control, enabling improved visibility over user activity and system changes. This supports forensic analysis and ongoing refinement of security practices. On-premises systems often lack such transparency.
The enhanced security posture of virtual desktops may enable you to implement less restrictive policies on user devices. For example, you may be able to implement a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy for employees or suppliers, cutting hardware costs, keeping power users happy, and safeguarding users’ privacy on their local devices.
IT Resilience at Scale
Cloud VDI services benefit from more robust infrastructure than on-premises VDI environments: multiple data centres, redundant power supplies, multiple Internet connections, physical security, and fire suppression systems. As a result, cloud VDI is able to provide a more resilient IT service, and is able to strengthen your own IT business continuity plans.
Hyperscale cloud VDI offerings include protection against large-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. This level of protection is often prohibitively expensive to replicate in-house.
Driving Operational Efficiency in Lean IT Environments
Once in service, Cloud VDI reduces the operational burden of desktops on IT teams. Rather than spend time maintaining traditional desktops or self-hosted virtual desktop infrastructure, IT teams can focus instead on IT strategy, optimisation, automation, security, and policies. Small in-house IT teams can punch about their weight by leaving cloud providers to take care of the nitty-gritty of implementation.
Management interfaces from providers like Azure Virtual Desktop offer granular control over host pools, images, and access policies. Automation and scripting capabilities support efficient scaling and maintenance.
Patch management becomes more predictable through the use of updated base images and the subtle draining of hosts. Most users log off at the end of the day, then log on the next day to a host that’s been patched. Users who stay logged on can be gently nudged with generous warnings of impending host shutdowns. As a last resort, lingering users VDI sessions can be terminated automatically, forcing them to switch to a patched desktop.
Cloud VDI doesn’t just improve security. It also extends the life of endpoint hardware. With compute and memory delivered by the cloud desktop, users can use lower-spec or ageing devices without sacrificing performance. This allows you to lengthen hardware update cycles, reassign old machines to new starters, and give power users standard-issue devices.
Should your organisation be involved in a merger or takeover, cloud VDI allows your IT team to rapidly provision and manage desktops for hundreds or thousands of staff, simplifying the move towards a unified desktop setup.
Cloud VDI Is Not About Lowering Costs
Although cloud-hosted desktops can reduce some IT expenses, their real value lies elsewhere: improving operational agility, streamlined IT management, adding resilience and reducing risk. These benefits are often overlooked by traditional return on investment (ROI) calculations, even though traditional desktop provisioning approaches create substantial real-world costs.
There’s significant value in having a more secure, consistent, scalable and controllable desktop environment. That’s what cloud VDI delivers.
Traditional VDI Offers May Not Be The Best Route to Cloud-Hosted Desktops
Software from legacy VDI vendors like Citrix and VMware Horizon (now known as Omnissa) can be used on the cloud, however this may not be the best choice for most organisations, as a result of such offerings steep learning curves, high and rising licensing costs, and inflexible licensing agreements. In some cases, there may be forced product bundling, a reduction in direct support, and even a reduction in R&D spending.
Hyperscale-native VDI services tend not to suffer these issues. They are easier to deploy, manage, secure and scale.
Gartner found that when it comes to the desktop-as-a-service market, Citrix and VMware were both trailing Microsoft when it comes to ‘ability to execute’ and ‘completeness of vision.’
Microsoft has two main offerings in that market: Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365. The former offers more control.
Why Azure Virtual Desktop Is a Cloud VDI Service Worth Considering
Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) offers a mature, enterprise-grade Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform that integrates with Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Intune, and Defender for Endpoint.
AVD supports multi-session Windows 10/11, FSLogix profile containers and GPU-enabled virtual machines.
The service is built on the world’s largest public clouds, Azure, which offers hosting in over twenty countries worldwide. This global footprint allows AVD to offer low-latency desktop access and local data processing/storage in many different countries, simplifying compliance with data protection law.
To support efficient, secure onboarding of new users there’s role-based provisioning and integration with group policies.
AVD is a Hybrid-Work-Friendly VDI Option
Now that hybrid work has become the norm, troubleshooting traditional desktops has become more difficult. Cloud-based Virtual desktop infrastructure offers a good way to simplify remote support, especially for mid-to-large organisations. It can make desktops more secure, scalable, and easy to manage.
If maintaining a traditional desktop estate or ageing VDI platform is straining your IT resources, now might be the right time to let the cloud take over.
How Syntura Can Help
Syntura supports your entire journey to Azure Virtual Desktop—from discovery and sizing to rollout and cost/performance optimisation. We can do the planning, run proof-of-concept pilots, and deliver a smooth migration to cloud VDI that’s tailored to your needs.
Our management portal simplifies day-to-day AVD management. It helps automate image patching, manage applications, and streamline provisioning for both AVD and Windows 365. You will be able to manage your desktops with ease, even if your Azure knowledge is limited.
Built-in tools enable dynamic autoscaling, rightsizing, and cost attribution per user or department. These features help reduce the total cost of ownership while delivering performance where it’s needed.
With our flexible co-management options, you decide how hands-on you want to be. We can handle complex tasks while your team retains control of simpler tasks such as session resets and monitoring, via a single pane of glass.
For regulated environments, we’re ISO 27001, ISO 9001, and Cyber Essentials Plus certified. Our services align with your change control and audit requirements to help you meet your compliance needs.
Perhaps you like the sound of AVD, but aren’t ready to make a decision. Not a problem. Start with a tailored pilot. We’ll help you demonstrate the value of VDI to your organisation, and help you refine your approach before scaling up.
Contact us today to learn more about Azure Virtual Desktop and how Syntura can help you make the most of it. Call us on +44 (0)20 7847 4510 or fill in our contact form to learn more.