VDI as a BYOD Solution update from January 2016

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a general term for organizations that allow their workers to use their personal devices to perform work tasks, rather than a corporate-owned and managed device. There are a few notable challenges for organizations that want to allow a BYOD policy.

The first of these is ensuring that the user has access to the suite of applications that they need to perform their work tasks. The second is ensuring that the device managed by the user isn’t vulnerable to security exploits that may spread beyond their personal device to the organization’s servers or other users’ devices.

VDI solves each of these problems. For example, BYOD users connecting to VDI desktops can access a full suite of applications that are installed on the virtual desktop computer. This VDI virtual machine is controlled and managed by the organization, which means that IT can ensure that all application instances are properly licensed. In this scenario, users retain control of their own hardware. It doesn’t matter what devices they use, as long as it can run the VDI client software and they can connect to the virtual machine.

The second BYOD challenge relates to security; many users don’t properly manage the security of their personal devices. When using VDI with BYOD, the IT department ensures that the VDI virtual machine is locked down and protected with the latest security software. This eliminates the security risks of the BYOD device, since it in effect becomes a “dumb terminal” that connects to the VDI desktop.

BYOD brings needed flexibility for companies and can be a valuable productivity boost for employees with strong preferences to use their own devices. VDI solutions can play a useful role in addressing the dual challenges of productivity and security when implementing BYOD policies and processes.

Underwritten by HPE NVIDIA, and VMware