Amazon WorkSpaces vs. Azure Virtual Desktop

For our use case, we found Amazon WorkSpaces well suited to remote work and other "work from home" and "work on the road" situations where the end user did not need to consume HD media (notably 4K) and did not need to produce any multimedia (audio, video, etc), but rather needed to perform more typical tasks such as web-browsing our corporate intranet and internal online apps, accessing files and using them through office productivity suites (Office - both online and desktop, and LibreOffice are under testing), etc.

Incentivized

1. Users with older machines and when the IT department is facing the crunch in procuring the actual system due to ongoing pandemic.
2. Users with more computing power can use these machines, which can work at better speeds and give out better results and faster speed.
3. If the end user internet is not perfect that is it is low speed or ping then it is not recommended to use these systems

Incentivized

• It gives us a virtual desktop machine which is completely configurable.
• We can launch and terminate those machines as per our requirements
• It eliminates software conflicts as we get clean system every time on launch

Incentivized

• You can publish as many host pools as you need to accommodate your diverse workloads
• Brings your own image for production workloads or test from the Azure Gallery
• Reduces costs with pooled, multi-session resources.
• With the new Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session capability exclusive to Windows Virtual Desktop and Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) role on Windows Server, you can greatly reduce the number of virtual machines and operating system (OS) overhead while still providing the same resources to your users.

Incentivized

• Restarting workspaces takes lot of time
• MFA can be done only via email. Text or dedicated app would be a great choice.

Incentivized

• While it is PaaS it would be nice to have some monitoring insights into some parts of the offering
• Migrating user sessions from one host to another (to be able to downscale) would be awesome
• It would be nice to have a more seamless deployment of FSLogix in a AVD Enviroment

Incentivized

For its Primary purpose in our organization, providing developers and testers a clean, isolated and configurable environments which saves hours. The usability is nearly perfect. Usability is only suffering when user is into more intensive task like any kind of graphic works. At that time user is not experiencing the smoothness like a local machine

Incentivized

AVD has performed well for us and allowed us to migrate away from Citrix.

Incentivized

AWS support in general is pretty good, and WorkSpaces is no exception. We haven't had too much need for support but on the occasion we have, they've been quick to respond and helpful. Our issues have been resolved rapidly.

Incentivized

WorkSpaces (VDI) is a much more robust solution that competitor offerings when considering scalability and security. Amazon WorkSpaces has a substantial free tier to explore if this is the right solution for your project without purchasing other solutions. Considering this, AWS is a great solution to explore Virtual Desktop experiences and workstations for any growing remote business.

Incentivized

For us Parallels RAS is still more a "onpremise" solution, with Azure Virtual Desktop we can really leverage the power of the cloud. We can spin up additional hosts if the load is too high and spin down hosts in the night to cut costs. Not being bound to onpremise hardware makes this extremely flexible. Seeing as most of our customers already have a M365 license that includes Azure Virtual Desktop licensing it doesn't cost us additional CAL's for Parallels RAS

Incentivized

• Having a linux VM seems positive due to the security of the OS
• The Linux OS version sometimes is basic and requires extra apps to be installed

Incentivized

• More people can work from home which is a positive contribution to company’s objective of promoting work life balance
• Reduced building operating costs with more staff working from home
• At any point in time
• Significantly reduced loss of data if a
• user loses or damages a work laptop

Incentivized