On-Premises to Cloud: A Workspace Service Journey

Covid 19 made it necessary for organization to quickly adapt to new remote and hybrid working models. A study by Citrix and YouGov found that 66% of respondents believe that employees will never return to office full time. IT teams did what needed to be done to make flexible work possible.  The traditional on-premise deployment for virtual apps and desktops have reached their physical capacity limit. A survey by Cloud 2025 and LogicMonitor revealed that 87% of organizations will speed up their migration to the cloud within the near future. It is clear that how we work and the infrastructure that supports digital workspaces will be fundamentally changing. In order to understand the future of digital workspaces, we need to look back at the past and understand the present state of digital workspaces.

See also: 5 ways Citrix Workspace empowers remote workers

The on-premise past of digital workspaces

The past of digital workspaces was largely based in a traditional PC environment. At that time, IT admins managed desktop and app delivery centrally. Virtualized apps and desktops become the norm and they were deployed in an on-premise data centre. The IT infrastructure needed to wrangle the core delivery components and require infrastructure that hosted the application and desktops. The characteristics of these traditional systems can help guide what is required from an effective cloud-friendly workspace. In a traditional PC driven environment:

• All employees worked from a single device
• The content being used was a combination of local and network storage
• Most work applications were Windows-based
• All users had to be physically present at the office location

Keeping these traditional systems functioning and secure was a daunting task. It required, frequent updates, upgrades to devices, patches. IT team members often had to work long night and on weekends in order to keep things going smoothly. The significant advantage of such systems was that IT teams had greater control over access and virtual machines. Applications and desktops could be more closely monitored. However, this intense churn had a negative impact on efficiencies and cost.

The user experience in this type of system was driven by a single device that was given to each worker. Overtime mobile devices started to become more common and workers had to adapt to workspace environments that were unique to mobile. The increase in use of mobile devices fragmented the digital workspace. Each device would deliver a different experience for employees, often with odd quirks and limitations. This created the need to have a unified experience for employees that could also be managed by IT teams.

The fragmented present of digital workspaces

2020 required organizations in all sectors to modify their traditional on-premise models to enable remote working. Long term strategies to migrate legacy workspace to the cloud had to be accelerated. In a very short time these systems had to be migrated so that business continuity could be maintained while also maintaining data security and productivity.

This quick change and rush to modernize has led to highly fragmented workspaces. Today, most organizations have a complex and intricate systems of devices and applications that employees need to use in order to get their work done. This can make access very complicated and increased the security risks across the organization.

Download this whitepaper by Citrix to learn about the future of digital workspaces. Organizations need to become more cloud friendly. Citrix workspace can make that possible with a single unified solution.