Happy New Year! Meet Me at the Endpoint for a Virtual Toast!

The New Year dawns bright with expectation, the promise of a healthy and happy year ahead for all our partners in virtualization around the globe.  What will the year 2018 bring to us in the VDI universe? No one can predict 100 percent, but we have made some thoughtful educated guesses as to what we see as key evolutionary trends in 2018.   Please share your comments with us.  We would love to hear whether you agree or have a different viewpoint.  Here are our thoughts:

VDI will see healthy growth.  Enterprises will continue to choose VDI as the best solution for serving a remote and distributed workforce. This will become even more important as the millennial workforce is completely mobile device oriented and the traditional desktop orientation for them simply does not exist.

DaaS will start to show momentum. Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) will gain strength, particularly as small-to-medium size businesses look at outsourcing VDI solutions.  DaaS will become a viable, economically attractive alternative to locally implemented VDI deployments.

DaaS-friendly endpoint solutions will thrive.  DaaS opens the door for endpoint security and optimization software solutions that support the flexibility DaaS offers.  Freeing themselves from hardware investments, and employing endpoint security and optimization software and DaaS, gives enterprises the ability to be more nimble and effective at budget control.

Endpoint security becomes a ‘must.’   Last year illustrated often how opening one email can allow a cyberattack to occur and create costly havoc.  This year, enterprises will step up security measures at the endpoint, recognizing that today’s multi-device workforce presents almost unlimited opportunities for cybercriminals to attack a network.  Enterprises will implement more access controls, such as enforcing contextual awareness, which allows a user, roaming between devices, access to applications based on who they are, and where they are.

DaaS will also become a driver in stepping up security.  Enterprises will need to provide inherent security for highly distributed deployments.  This will need to go beyond traditional security approaches like virus scanners and firewalls, and involve implementing centralized management to enforce security policies on every device.

A major VDI acquisition will occur.  Call this our Super Bowl pick but we believe one major VDI supplier will be acquired in a record breaking deal!  It’s a natural evolution as the VDI market continues to mature.

Raise a Virtual Glass to the Endpoint!

We see 2018 bright with the promise of more enterprises believing endpoint security and optimization and security really is the future, to help our mobile, distributed workforces thrive and to protect all the data and application assets that fuel our global economy.

To your health and success this year!