The majority of organizations use some kind of VDI environment for remote access today. Whether it’s for their employees looking to access private resources for day-to-day life, a recent merger or acquisition, or third-party user access. Popular VDI technologies include on-premises VDI solutions like Omnissa Horizon and Citrix XenDesktop or desktop-as-a-service options like Amazon Workspaces and Windows Virtual Desktop.
With 79% of organizations looking to adopt security service edge (SSE) platform in the next two years, and 46% beginning SSE deployment with zero trust network access (ZTNA) technology, we often receive these common questions:
1. Can SSE replace VDI?
2. Can SSE complement VDI?
The most important thing to consider before answering either of these questions is understanding the different ways VDI is used today. The following are seven common use cases for VDI technologies that we’ve seen.
- Granular access—Minimizing overprivileged access to key business resources.
- Visibility into traffic—VDI can be used to route traffic through on-premises security appliances.
- Data loss prevention—Ensuring sensitive data is not stored or placed on the end user's smartphone or desktop while also ensuring data remains within the corporate environment.
- Desktop environment management—Frictionless desktop experience and allowing connectivity from a variety of end-user devices through a browser.
- License optimization—Instead of having a license for every user, VDI allows hosted pools, which are a collection of one or more identical virtual machines.
- Data optimization—Reducing latency or lag due to client-server connections.
- Traditional application support—Support for legacy protocols (that is, Windows 2003)
One of the most exciting benefits of SSE is its ability to ensure secure access to specific business resources, without requiring network access or access to a device within the network. The policies that are created within, and enforced by SSE, allow for advanced access control through policies that determine the context in which data can be accessed. Another key capability is the visibility into all session traffic that is made available to security and network admins. User logs can be used to determine which users access what resources, commands used, content that was downloaded, and such. Role-based access controls even help to ensure privileged account management to control visibility levels of sensitive data for compliance needs. These SSE capabilities can either replace VDI or be coupled with the remote access solutions for a potent combination—depending on the use case.
SSE services can be used to replace VDI in the above use cases 1, 2, and 3. So, if these are the main reasons for using VDI, IT leaders can feel confident that an SSE service can be used to help remove the need for VDI. That means granular security and a seamless experience—without springing for expensive VDI licenses.
For use cases 4, 5, 6, and 7, SSE is best used as a complement to the VDI technology to introduce more security and control over the environment.
One easy way to reduce the exorbitant costs of VDI, and adopt zero trust security, is to think about potential use cases where using SSE would be best within your business. Identifying these easily attainable opportunities can provide immediate benefits.
- Insurance brokers or healthcare professionals—For example, if you are an insurance company, you most likely employ insurance brokers who are technically third-party users. These brokers need access to web-based applications running on your application portal. Granting these brokers secure access to your portal becomes a breeze with SSE. This is the same for healthcare institutions that employ healthcare professionals who technically do not work for the hospitals they work in.
- B2B customers or supplier access—If you are currently using VDI to connect B2B customers or resellers to web portal resources to learn about your products or suppliers to web apps to create or cancel orders, using SSE could be a better option than VDI.
- M&A—Perhaps you’re an organization that often grows through mergers and acquisitions. Standing up an expensive VDI stack becomes unnecessary if your goal is simply to allow newly acquired employees to access core applications like HR and benefits. SSE not only saves money, but it is also much easier to manage—and more secure in this case.
- Financial advisors or auditor access—If your organization has auditors (such as E&Y, KPMG, and others) who need access to your books or financial records, SSE can be a cost-effective alternative. SSE can eliminate the need for VDI technology and its associated costs while still providing access to the necessary applications.
Ultimately, determining whether to replace VDI with SSE, or complement, is really up to the customer. They must take the time to first understand how they are using VDI today, then look for ways to reduce VDI use where possible by using SSE. After all, placing users on a network, and poking holes in firewalls, just to allow access to VDI environments is not ideal when it comes to protecting the network from threat actors and malware. Additionally, continuing to invest in expensive VDI licenses is not a cost-effective solution. The good news is that, in many cases, there’s a new alternative for IT to leverage.
Learn more about HPE Aruba Networking SSE and how you can leverage it for VDI replacement or meet with one of our SSE experts!
Blog author : Camilla Ahlquist, Senior Product Marketing Manager, HPE
