Employees today frequently work remotely and while traveling - and they use a wide variety of devices, including desktops, laptops and mobile devices. The traditional desktop deployment model is also a poor fit for an increasingly mobile and remote workforce. With that model, administrators often spend too much time and money installing software, managing upgrades and updates, and attempting to secure the devices.

Many organizations are looking for an alternative to the traditional desktop deployment model, in which IT administrators install an operating system and applications on every employee device. Users can access their desktop environment from a wide variety of devices, including PCs, laptops, tablets and some smartphones. The desktops run in virtual machines hosted on compute, storage and network infrastructure managed by the cloud provider. Desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) is a way of delivering complete virtual desktop environments to users including operating systems, applications, files and user preferences from the cloud.

Vmware daas