Desktop-as-a-service now often cheaper to run than laptops - even after thin client costs
Human usage set to double, AI agents might need them too
Analyst firm Gartner has declared hosted PCs are now often cheaper to operate than on-prem laptops, and two years away from being cost-effective for 95 percent of workers.
That opinion emerged this week in the firm’s Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service (DaaS), which considers hosted desktops – not traditional on-prem desktop virtualization – and predicts that by 2027, 20 percent of workers will use a hosted machine as their main workspace, up from 10 percent in 2019. The Square of Sorcery also predicts that by 2027, virtual desktops will be cost-effective for 95 percent of workers, up from 40 percent in 2019.
Cost is a big reason for the shift.
“Total cost of ownership for DaaS, especially when users couple it with thin-client endpoints, is now lower than that of a laptop PC for many use cases,” Gartner wrote. “Enterprises continue to increase the mix of DaaS within their estates, but most are deploying DaaS for specific use cases rather than a complete PC replacement.”
The analyst also reckons DaaS has all but done for VDI.
“Gartner rarely speaks to an organization that is planning to deploy a new on-premises VDI solution. Net-new deployments are almost exclusively using DaaS, and on-premises deployments are either migrating to DaaS or moving to a cloud control plane,” reads a quote from the Quadrant.
Gartner rates Microsoft the runaway leader in the field. “No other vendor has such broad capabilities across digital workplace technologies, hyperscale cloud and AI,” the quadrant states, even though its three DaaS offerings - Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365 and Microsoft Dev Box – are all cloud-hosted. Gartner warns “Microsoft is prioritizing Windows 365 over Azure Virtual Desktop”, so buyers need to think carefully before committing.
Gartner also rates Citrix a leader in the field, as “Its intellectual property, especially its protocol and management plane, alongside its integrations, allows more use cases to be addressed than with other vendors.” The analyst notes that Citrix only sells DaaS in bundles that can leave buyers paying for product they don’t want, and warns that the vendor seldom offers subscriptions shorter than three years to its large customers.
Omnissa, the former end-user-compute limb of VMware, won Gartner’s admiration for its “strong offering for deployments of all scales.” However the analyst says its customers have expressed concern that Omnissa may struggle to continue providing solid global support.
AWS also made Gartner’s Leaders in the field, winning recognition for bundling management tools with its Workspaces DaaS.
Agents, too?
Software agents may also start using virtual desktops, according to end-user computing specialist Tony Foster, who has a day job at Dell but blogs as “wondernerd” and this week noted the growing number of AI tools that can operate computers.
“All the geeks on TV keep talking about how these AI agents will be able to do things for you, like book dinner reservations, or hotels, schedule meetings, and other mundane tasks,” Foster wrote, before observing that to do so agents will need to access a computer.
He thinks computers designed for human use won’t be optimal.
“For example, if I give an architect a virtual desktop designed for an accountant and tell them to create a new facility. They can probably do it, but it won’t be efficient or easy to do. You want to give the end user the best tools to do their job.”
Agents, Foster observed, won’t need a mouse, and pop-up notices won’t be relevant.
“They will need new ‘desktops’ optimized for them to use,” he suggested, before wondering “How will these new workspaces be licensed?” He considered two options: Discrete licenses for workspaces licensed for human and agentic use, and licenses that cover use of a workspace by a human and a set number of agents that work on their behalf.
For what it’s worth, Microsoft already offers an “ Unattended License” for non-human users of its products. ®