Service providers expect a significant growth in the desktop-as-a-service (DAAS) market.
This is according to a latest research from Citrix, which notes DAAS is still emerging and developing as a market.
The study generated responses from more than 500 Citrix service providers located in 40 countries around the world - including SA.
The vast majority of respondents (71%) anticipated DAAS revenue growth, says the report - 52% projecting growth to range between 16% and 50%, with 17% of the respondents projecting revenue growth to exceed 50%.
The report indicates service providers are seeing a demand from customers for a complete desktop-as-a-service approach, a workspace that includes apps, desktops, file sharing and mobility.
One of the biggest reasons for the growth in DAAS is bring-your-own-device (BYOD), says Brendan McAravey, country manager at Citrix SA.
As the demand for BYOD increases, companies of all sizes are looking at ways in which they can keep employees connected and the business running, he adds.
According to McAravey, DAAS enables businesses to empower employees with the freedom of working off cloud-hosted desktops at any time and on any device.
Furthermore, the need for a highly secure, yet versatile infrastructure is a factor, he says.
McAravey points out security is a major concern for all businesses, especially as the number of devices and apps used by employees increases.
The benefit of DAAS is that it addresses key compliance and security priorities by ensuring the right level of secure cloud desktop access for every individual and situation, he adds.
"Desktops-as-a-service is a good solution for businesses of any size from SMEs up to enterprises. By taking day-to-day management of the IT infrastructure out of IT's hands, IT departments no longer have to worry about resource provisioning, load balancing and network issues."
McAravey notes the decline of the desktop and PC market has had a very positive impact on DAAS, says McAravey.
The Middle East and Africa PC market suffered a sharp year-on-year decline of 25.6% in Q2 2015 - the steepest decline recorded for a single quarter, says IDC.
"Businesses are adopting workplace transformation strategies, transitioning from individual, 'fat client' PCs to a virtual infrastructure."
This move away from traditional desktop PCs has positively impacted the virtualisation and DAAS markets as businesses look for new, more cost-effective, efficient and mobile solutions for the workforce, he adds.
As a result there is increased pressure on IT departments to ensure that they can support a range of devices and deliver virtual desktops, applications and clients in a secure manner to any of these devices at any time, says McAravey.
Mark Reynolds, general business and partner lead at VMware sub-Saharan Africa, says the opportunities for DAAS are vast, considering that 80% of the regional organisations are considered SMEs, where their core competencies are not in IT.
"The opportunity here is that it enables the customer to have minimal IT infrastructure investment and yet demand the highest performance, security, availability and fault tolerance from a service provider, with the assurance that they are capable of delivery at the risk of incurring penalties if they don't."
In SA, bandwidth and data security concerns are the main challenges facing organisations who want to adopt DAAS, says Reynolds.
There is still a mantra of having to keep your data in a place where you can "see" it - that is the data centre, he adds.
There are also concerns surrounding relying on a service provider to keep data intact and secure, in the correct format, and being able to get the data back should an agreement be cancelled or expire, notes Reynolds.
It is likely the adoption of DAAS in SA may lag behind other markets as has been the case with other technologies, says McAravey. However, Citrix expects to see growth in uptake locally within the next 18 months as other trends such as BYOD and workforce transformation continue to grow, he adds.
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