With the rapid evolution of educational technology, education institutions are constantly searching for ways to improve their IT infrastructure and offer a better service for students and staff. One critical area is how students and staff access applications. Traditionally, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) has been a convenient solution for delivering applications regardless of the industry, but in recent years cloud delivery of a single application at a time is emerging as a more tailored solution for education’s unique needs. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits and limitations of VDI and why cloud delivery should be on every institution’s radar.
VDI was once the gold standard for providing access to desktop environments and applications remotely. It allows institutions to virtualize desktops, delivering them to users regardless of their location. However, VDI comes with its fair share of limitations, which make it less effective for today’s flexible learning environments.
Setting up and maintaining a VDI system can be prohibitively expensive for institutions, especially those operating on tight budgets. It requires significant hardware investment, including servers, storage, and high-performance networking components. Moreover, the cost of licensing virtual desktops and keeping them updated adds to the financial burden.
Since VDI delivers a full virtual desktop environment, it can suffer from performance bottlenecks, especially during peak usage times. Latency issues, lag, and slow loading times can frustrate students and staff and degrade the overall experience, especially affecting courses using resource-intensive applications like engineering or design software.
Managing a VDI system is a complex and resource-intensive task. IT teams must constantly monitor and maintain virtual machines, handle patches and updates, and troubleshoot performance issues. This puts a significant strain on already-stretched IT departments, pulling resources away from other critical projects for the institution.
VDI solutions are not easily scalable. As institutions grow or change with year-on-year enrollments, the infrastructure must be expanded, which involves significant costs and logistical challenges. Scaling VDI to meet growing demands can be inefficient, time-consuming, and costly.
Cloud solutions offer a modern alternative that addresses the key limitations of VDI. Instead of virtualizing entire desktops, cloud infrastructure can virtualize and deliver individual applications, making it more efficient, scalable, and cost-effective.
One of the biggest advantages of cloud infrastructure is its cost efficiency. Institutions don’t need to invest in expensive on-premises infrastructure like servers or storage, as applications are hosted in the cloud. Instead of paying for full virtual desktops, universities and colleges only pay for the specific launches of applications their students and staff need. This usage-based pricing model allows for better control over IT budgets.
Cloud solutions can deliver applications direct to users’ browsers without the need for a virtual desktop. This means students and staff can access applications from any device—whether it’s a laptop, tablet, or even an underpowered PC—without experiencing performance issues. Applications run as if they were installed locally, providing a faster, smoother experience without the latency that often plagues VDI setups.
Security is a growing concern for educational institutions, particularly as they increase their reliance on digital tools and remote learning. Cloud infrastructure often provides better security controls than VDI, as it centralizes applications in a secure cloud environment. Instead of managing security on individual virtual desktops, the cloud provider takes responsibility for safeguarding applications, managing updates, and implementing robust security protocols. This reduces the risk of data breaches and ensures that institutions remain compliant with regulations.
With cloud solutions, much of the management and maintenance are handled by the cloud provider, freeing up internal IT resources. AppsAnywhere’s Cloud Delivery, for instance, packages, hosts, and manages applications for the institution, which reduces the time and effort required from IT teams. This allows them to focus on more strategic tasks, like improving user experience and innovating in other areas of IT infrastructure.
As a 360º solution developed exclusively for the education sector, AppsAnywhere’s Cloud Delivery allows easy and seamless management of the entire software estate in one place. It is scalable, cost-effective, and integrated, with an easy-to-use portal that simplifies application access for students and staff.
AppsAnywhere’s Cloud Delivery allows institutions to deliver any Windows application on non-Windows devices, such as Chromebooks and Macs. This allows institutions to enable and easily manage a secure and equitable BYOD program to all students, regardless of the device they own.
For students with older or underpowered devices, AppsAnywhere ensures that they can still access resource-intensive applications like design or engineering software without performance issues. AppsAnywhere handles the heavy lifting, so users can work smoothly even on devices that would typically struggle with such software.
Cloud Delivery is inherently scalable. Institutions can add new applications or scale their delivery infrastructure effortlessly as student and faculty needs evolve. Plus, Cloud Delivery works well for both on-campus and remote learners, providing flexibility for hybrid and fully online learning models.
With AppsAnywhere, IT teams can manage everything from a single platform. Apps are packaged, hosted centrally, and made available on demand, which eliminates the need for institutions to maintain their own VDI systems. This reduces costs, simplifies operations, and ensures that apps are always available.
AppsAnywhere follows a consumption-based pricing model, meaning institutions only pay for what they use. This flexible model is ideal for universities and colleges working within budget constraints, allowing them to optimize costs without sacrificing performance or functionality.
As educational institutions continue to embrace hybrid learning models and remote education, Cloud Delivery offers a compelling alternative to traditional VDI solutions. With its cost efficiency, scalability, ease of use, and superior performance, Cloud Delivery should certainly be considered when looking to the future of application delivery in education. AppsAnywhere has been at the forefront of software delivery in education for 15 years. Our deep knowledge and understanding of the unique needs of universities and colleges and our relentless innovation has driven us to continue to partner with our customers to solve complex challenges. Cloud Delivery supports long-term success through student satisfaction, sustainable IT services, and greater student outcomes.
Cloud Delivery is our brand-new AppsAnywhere-managed delivery method, our answer to your VDI needs.
Thank you for completing the form. You will receive an email shortly with our Cloud Delivery Brochure attached. Thank you.
Auto validation is still available as an option. We aim to ensure there are as few occasions of attempting to launch but being unable to as possible, and where they occur, explaining why.
Detection occurs during validation - the client is given a list of directories to look in and it returns what it finds.
Dark mode wasn't something we were able to do for this version, but it is something that we are looking to include in the future.
If client download is not available in that instance - such as in labs mode or if client install is suppressed, then the client link will not appear. The client download link will also only appear on platforms which have a client - i.e. Windows and macOS.
If you would like to upgrade to 2.12 please submit a support request and the team will be touch.
To implement BYOD in a cost-effective and sustainable way, schools will need a clear idea of a number of key data points to understand which technologies are necessary and how many licenses of each technology are required: Number of users/devices Weighting of device type/platform (Windows vs Mac vs Linux) Software titles to deliver Usage data on software titles for licensing User groups requiring specialist software You can read more about implementing BYOD policies in schools in the SecurEdge article, ‘How to successfully implement a BYOD program into your school’ > https://www.securedgenetworks.com/blog/how-to-successfully-implement-a-byod-program-into-your-school
With a BYOD policy implemented, schools can begin working to introduce centralized communication points such as Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) or Learning Management Systems (LMSs). Software delivery tools such as AppsAnywhere also provide areas that can be used to communicate with students. Once BYOD is enabled, schools can be more confident that students are actively accessing digital academic resources through specific channels, and that communication propagated through those channels is much more likely to be seen.
Yes, it can do. While BYOD technologies may be expensive, with the correct provisioning and tools implemented, the decrease in hardware investment required from schools by allowing students to bring their own device and insight from reporting data can help schools save money on their software delivery.
BYOD policies in schools reduce the hardware investment of electronic devices, including mobile devices, needed for schools to offer equal access to digital academic resources to all students. By leveraging student-owned hardware, BYOD policies in schools can increase the resources available to students, such as software, digital media and digital learning environments, at a fraction of the cost of ensuring there are enough organization-owned machines for every student to use. Furthermore, BYOD allows students to access school resources outside of school and outside of teaching hours via their own device.
BYOD policies in schools help to introduce students to completing work from their own devices in preparation for higher education and employment. In an ever-more-digital world, getting used to using personal devices to complete work can help desensitize students to the potential distractions offered by those devices. BYOD can also help students learn to manage their time effectively in a society where the lines between work time and free time are becoming more and more blurred.
We’re excited to be releasing AppsAnywhere 3.0 in December 2022, in time for January enrolment. Your dedicated Customer Success team will be in touch when it’s available to ensure your institution gets the most out of AppsAnywhere.
To get the latest version if you are currently using AppsAnywhere, schedule a call with your specialist implementations team and we can help you to start benefiting from AppsAnywhere 2.12 now.
Most IT professionals get excited when considering new technologies and solutions. Without a doubt, the prospect of a VDI deployment project is likely to get your team’s juices flowing. However, deploying VDI is complex and often includes a host of new infrastructure and unique software management tools. The best advice is to engage with a vendor partner early on so that the design for your campus can be vetted by experts who work with VDI on a daily basis. A vendor partner can also help guide through different architecture scenarios, use cases, and potential pitfalls. All of the knowledge transfer gained will put the IT team in a far better position to successfully deploy and support VDI for your campus.
As is the theme throughout the rest of this article, there isn’t really an objective victor in DaaS vs. VDI. However, when it comes to Higher Ed, we rarely see full DaaS deployments. They’re often saved for more limited use cases, such as temporary BYOD access, or delivering to satellite campuses. For the scale of delivery required by HEIT, VDI will usually come out on top. However, you still need to decide whether to go for legacy VDI, or newer, hosted solutions…
DaaS refers to virtual desktops being provided to organizations as a service-based solution. It will include support for managing, upgrading and maintaining virtual machines. It is a more complete out-of-the-box solution with a price tag to match. Fully-hosted VDI is just like legacy VDI, except you don’t need on-premise server infrastructure, and they are often pay-as-you-go. Fully-hosted solutions are also referred to cloud-hosted solutions and they are the same as VDI, except hosted for you, as the name suggests.
Both VMware and Citrix have a robust product offering across many different solution suites. Historically, Citrix has excelled in the realm of remote app delivery or app remoting solutions. On the other hand, VMware leads the way with full desktop VDI delivery. Deciding on the right approach is solely dependent on the needs of the institution and what goals they are hoping to achieve with the project.
A formal BYOD policy helps to ensure a high chance of success and adoption as well as communicating practical information to users on how to interact with and use software on their BYO devices.
To put it concisely, a BYOD policy should include any or all of the following: Device type Operating system Available resources Security Usage conditions
A BYOD policy is a formal definition and agreement between the BYOD provider (universities) and the BYOD users (students). It is similar to an SLA (Service Level Agreement) between service-providers and outlines how users can expect to interact with their university's BYOD program, as well as any limitations, usage conditions, and compatibility information.
Sign up to our newsletter.
AppsAnywhere is a global education technology solution provider that challenges the notion that application access, delivery, and management must be complex and costly. AppsAnywhere is the only platform to reduce the technical barriers associated with hybrid teaching and learning, BYOD, and complex software applications, and deliver a seamless digital end-user experience for students and staff. Used by over 3 million students across 300+ institutions in 22 countries, AppsAnywhere is uniquely designed for education and continues to innovate in partnership with the education community and the evolving needs and expectations of students and faculty.
Register your interest for a demo and see how AppsAnywhere can help your institution. Receive a free consultation of your existing education software strategy and technologies, an overview of AppsAnywhere's main features and how they benefit students, faculty and IT, and get insight into the AppsAnywhere journey and post launch partnership support.
Register your interest for a demo and see how AppsAnywhere can help your institution. Receive a free consultation of your existing education software strategy and technologies, an overview of AppsAnywhere's main features and how they benefit students, faculty and IT, and get insight into the AppsAnywhere journey and post launch partnership support.
