7 Benefits of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for the Accounting Industry

With the COVID-19 pandemic mandating the necessary social distancing and work-from-home culture for accountants, virtual workspaces are becoming more common. From moving to the cloud to using virtual desktops, the accounting industry is adopting technology at an increasing rate. 

Understanding Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is a technology that helps you create virtual desktops on a server setup. You can access these virtual desktops from anywhere with end-point devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

Through VDI, multiple desktops are created on virtual machines (VMs). Every virtual desktop unit has a separate operating system, such as macOS. This virtual interface is similar to your regular office desktop unit.

By implementing VDI, you allow your employees and users to access accounting software remotely through a stable Internet connection.

First, let’s explore the additional features and benefits of the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

1. Cost-Effectiveness

A major advantage of VDI is its cost-effectiveness. This solution helps accounting firms optimize the costs of hardware purchase, work-from-home glitches, and downtime issues. 

You don’t need to purchase a different software license for every hardware unit. You can utilize the same license for various virtual devices. 

If you utilize the cloud-hosted desktop, you can scale without spending a lot on improving the storage capacity of your server. You can even de-scale when you don’t require this extra storage to improve your costing!

Overall, a VDI solution’s long-term costs are much less than increasing and decreasing storage from time to time in-house. Everything from hardware costs to management requires so many resources, which you can easily reduce with a VDI solution.

2. Improved Performance

The virtual desktop infrastructure that we knew two years back is very different from the implementations in 2021. We now live in the era of digital transformation, where virtual desktops are much more effective, useful, and advanced than before.

You can work on virtual desktops from any physical location as if on your local desktop. For an accounting professional, VDI helps them process books, check accounts, and reconcile bank statements. 

The ability to conduct everything through a virtual interface over the Internet leads to better productivity.

Your desktop would not stop in between your work or lead to downtimes. You always have a reliable technology to go to, which improves your operational efficiency and employees’ performance.

3. Advanced Control

When you are centrally managing the admins, architecture, and entire accounting unit, you are able to control things in ways you like. Through VDI, you can select the configuration, OS, resource allocation, and RAM features yourself. You have the power to decide the type of configuration your employees need for work.

So, even with the VDI, you don’t lose control over your IT infrastructure. You get more control over the implementation, as the cost is low, so you have more bandwidth for this personalization.     

4. Device Independence

On the VDI, nothing is stored on the host device. So, if your employees are using their personal laptops to work, no data is being stored on these devices.

Everything on your desktop, including applications and data, is stored on the remote server. Your employees can access this server through any device that has an Internet connection. 

Hence, if a computer unit fails or crashes, you don’t need to wait for your IT team to recover it. Open another laptop and access your data immediately. 

5. BYOD Support

One of the main advantages of a VDI solution is remote accessibility. These features help accounting firms enable Bring-Your-Own-Device. You can create a simple BYOD policy and allow employees to work on their personal devices at work. This will reduce the cost of hardware units and help your employees work on a device they are used to working on. 

6. Advanced Security

The best type of security is offered by your VDI solution as there’s centralized control. So, everything is running on a cloud server, and endpoints have no role in it. This means that if your employees open virtual desktops on their devices, they won’t end up compromising your data. 

If any employee device faces a virus or malware attack, it won’t reach your remote server.

It will stay in that endpoint. Even if the employee’s device crashes or gets stolen, your IT team can easily manage and revoke rights from that device. 

7. On-Boarding Support

One of the lesser-discussed benefits of a VDI solution is the ability to onboard employees without any hassle. 

For instance, if you are hiring five employees during a pandemic, you don’t need to go through the hassle of purchasing and configuring systems. All you need to do is give them remote access to the desktop and define access control of these employees. 

Conclusion

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is an optimum solution for remote access, advanced control, and better performance. Hence, CPAs have an easy way to increase return on investment. You can also utilize an alternative VDI solution, the DaaS (Desktop as a Service) solution. It is basically the VDI hosted on the cloud. Here, your costs reduce and efficiency improves!