A recently released Forrester report has found that 63 percent of IT professionals believe competitive advantage can be improved by companies increasing focus on employee mobility. Those surveyed suggested it could help employees respond quicker to client needs and provide more effective service. When asked how to improve employee mobility, more than half of the respondents said organizations should implement desktop virtualization within the organization.

As the consumerization of IT gains strength, employees have more opportunities than ever to choose their own applications, devices and even operating systems.

“The consumerization of IT has enabled workers the freedom to choose their own devices,” says Paul Parke, vice president of product and corporate marketing at 1E, a specialist in IT operations management tools and solutions. “IT needs to become more user-centric in order to embrace users that really have gotten rather indifferent to the services and technology provided by IT.”

Because of this, a rising number of organizations are enabling their workers to participate in bring your own device, or even bring your own PC, programs. As this trend grows, desktop virtualization is gaining new adherents.

Improve BYOD, remote workers with virtualization‘s mobility
Virtualization provides employees with mobility as well as seamless access to their office desktop, which allows businesses to adopt BYOD programs while still ensuring data security. Through the use of virtualization, a desktop can be manifested on any endpoint while reducing operational costs and the complexity of managing traditional desktop hardware.

Among the respondents of the Forrester survey, local desktop virtualization, or client-hosted virtualization, seemed to be the most popular option. When using local desktop virtualization, an entire desktop environment is hosted within a protected system on an employee’s device, allowing programs to operate without relying on a high-performance network. Utilizing this type of virtualization enables workers to run business applications from an existing operating system, providing them with the flexibility to work anywhere while still offering a secure way to access sensitive data and personal files.

“IT can fully manage and secure the data and applications using the same policies that govern physical devices, making it easier to manage and support frequently traveling employees or those who work offline,” explained CIO contributor Thor Olavsrud.

Businesses are also able to be more agile when hiring new employees by utilizing virtual desktops, as new hires can be added to networks with just the click of a button, reducing the hassle of creating a new environment. New applications can also be provided to all employees with the same ease as they are part of a centralized management interface.

As well as offering greater mobility and agility, virtual desktops also provide cost-effective disaster recovery solutions that can be employed quickly and easily. Implementing this type of technology gives companies built-in resiliency at every level of the enterprise and ensures that business-critical systems and data are protected and will keep working if a data center is compromised.