We’ve been talking about the rise of VDI for some time now, yet each year it somehow it has always fizzled out, its adoption plagued by a number of challenges and the state of maturity in VDI technologies. Big changes are on the way as a fascinating research report has emerged that indicates that a surge of VDI adoption is set to take place this year.  The survey reveals that more than 80 percent of companies surveyed are currently using or considering Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) as part of their IT strategy.  Austin-based VDI company Pivot3 commissioned the survey from Dimensional Research, reaching out globally across mid-market size organizations.  Pivot3’s growth opportunities and customer momentum is aligned with this surging adoption that is forecast in the study.  The year ahead is set for significant growth for VDI in the mid-market and Pivot3 is well positioned as their product is designed for mid-market implementations.

Key findings from the report included:

• Current state of VDI – A total of 83 percent of surveyed IT professionals agreed that their current IT strategies include VDI. Additionally, 55 percent of participants expect to utilize new hardware. A total of 86 percent stated that VDI appliances are not commodity equipment, and in fact have unique features and capabilities. For desired VDI deployment models, 66 percent of companies prefer an internal and secure VDI deployment over Desktop-as-a-Service (18 percent), hybrid cloud (12 percent) and public cloud (4 percent).
• Consideration high among mid-market sized businesses – Consideration was especially high among mid-market sized businesses with about 80 percent of companies of 5,000 or less employees reporting they are considering VDI as part of their IT strategy. About 60 percent of larger companies (more than 5,000 employees) expressed they are considering VDI.
• Global perspective – While companies in all geographies include VDI as part of their strategy, a larger percentage of more than 70 percent plan to adopt VDI in the United States with Europe and Asia following closely behind.
• Reasons for adoption – Participants attributed VDI success to its ability to enable easier maintenance and support (68 percent), and faster deployment (63 percent), all at an attractive price-point. These factors have prompted larger companies consisting of over 20,000 employees to adopt VDI at an increased rate, as nearly 70 percent of large enterprises surveyed currently use VDI.
• Shift in skepticism – Initial concerns targeting implementation of the technology have shifted to issues with user acceptance, performance expectations and the ability to show a positive ROI.  Increased network bandwidth and user acceptance were found to be the top VDI challenges, whereas only two percent of participants named security as an issue.

Pivot3 offers a range of products including highly specialized yet easy to deploy VDI appliances.  The purpose-built appliances are specifically tuned for high-demand data environments and user experience, yet are completely scalable.  In a briefing with Pivot3 CMO Olivier Thierry, we discussed the tremendous opportunity that VDI presented to the market, particularly with a product that was simple, powerful, and flexible.  The speed at which a Pivot3 VDI pilot can be deployed is less than an hour and the transition to production is seamless.  When planning for production, clients are able to size by compute, not storage and eliminate several challenges such as storage tuning.  Pivot3 is able to simplify the VDI picture for any organization by providing an elastically scaling and enterprise-grade product, providing a low cost of entry and cost-effectiveness at all scales. Pivot3 VDI appliances are a feature-rich, easy adoption, scale-out solution that is well-suited for mid-market organizations.  Pivot3’s confidence in their product is such that they also provide a free test drive of their product online.

More than 80% of companies surveyed considering VDI as part of IT strategy; reduced costs and faster deployments as key adoption points for VDI