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Service providers expect a significant growth in the desktop as a service (DaaS) market, according to the latest research from Citrix.
The 2015 Global DaaS Market Survey, which polled more than 500 Citrix service providers in 40 countries, shows service provider partners predict a 71% growth in DaaS, while the adoption of public cloud is set to account for half of cloud adoption for DaaS in 2016. Naturally, adoption of desktop as a service through hosted or co-located data centres will be at the same level, but down from 79% today.
The sector is maturing with providers expanding into different solutions, the research notes. While almost half (49%) of providers offer complete workspaces as part of the desktop as a service model, other offerings are on the table, including mobile device management (34%), file share and sync (29%), and cloud VDI (22%). Despite that, vertical focus is predominantly driving business growth, with finance, manufacturing, and healthcare cited.
John Carey, senior director of worldwide channel programs strategy at Citrix, noted in a blog post: “The 2015 survey showed growth in service providers offering this complete desktops as a service approach, but also new trends in hosted mobile device management, file share and sync, plus hosted networking. This is exciting for Citrix and our partners as we continue to develop and enhance the secure mobile workspace technologies that benefit people, wherever they choose to work.”
The evolution of desktop as a service, as well as virtual desktop infrastructure, has been an interesting one in recent months and years. Many industry players argue DaaS could succeed where VDI has failed; not least in terms of reduced cost, essentially renting equipment from the cloud provider rather than putting together a costly on-prem VDI deployment.
At the back end of 2014, NaviSite’s group vice president and general manager Sumeet Sabharwal explained in a company blog post how maturation of technology, expansion of the provider landscape, and expansion of endpoint devices has helped create a perfect storm for desktop as a service going into 2015.
Speaking to this reporter in March, Sabharwal explained how aiming the technology at specific workloads has improved the situation; however issues such as image management, desktop engineering and Active Directory integration means the service is “not child’s play.”