This year, a sea of Internet-connected devices will continue their relentless advance into corporate environments—from wearable gadgets to the Internet of things (IoT). In its report of the top ten technology trends to note in 2016, Gartner coined the phrase “device mesh” to describe this phenomenon.
As CIOs and IT decision makers contemplate their organisation’s IT strategy for the year ahead, it’s easy to feel dread at the rapidly rising number of endpoints that are used to access corporate information and resources.
How can IT organisations cope with increasing employee demand for seamless access to software and solutions across the full range of devices they use, while providing a consistent user experience beyond the limitations of platforms, devices, and physical locations?
What’s more, these end-points increasingly run on a spread of platforms – soon, we’ll be talking about not just Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, but also Apple’s Watch OS, Android Wear, Samsung’s Tizen OS, and more.
After all, it is inevitable for wearable and Internet of Things devices to become more independently powerful, increasing their demand for data and permissions to access corporate resources. For example, it is not a far stretch to imagine your smartwatch downloading emails directly to local storage instead of through a companion smartphone.
One solution stands as a simple and cost-effective answer to this complex device mesh landscape, but sometimes does not receive the attention it deserves – a virtual desktop and application infrastructure, more commonly abbreviated as VDI.
Virtualisation overcomes the native limitations of a device, and delivers applications to any device securely. Centralised management of virtualised applications reduces IT administration costs and ensures uninterrupted productivity. It is also cost-effective, making the remote publishing application affordable for any SMB.
Moving into 2016, as the so-called device mesh evolves and expands into a complex infrastructure that comprises both physical and digital devices, we expect interest in virtualisation and application delivery models to hit an all-time high in the coming year.
This will be especially relevant in areas where businesses are looking deeper at creating effective solutions to secure and manage BYOD and mobility in their workplace.
Furthermore, redesigning the process around software-defined application services will enable web-scale performance and provide on-premise and cloud architecture flexibility.
This will help IT departments preserve the ambient user experience and continuity across device mesh boundaries, empowering greater employee satisfaction and business success in 2016.
Eugenio Ferrante, General Manager, Parallels Asia Pacific