t cht lk data-protected environments. Such movement may accelerate as concern over big tech’ s use of data and intellectual property intensifies with the increasing reach of LLM developers’ data grab. Private clouds consisting of private VDI, AI and data services might be a way to retain control at the organisational level. Given the geopolitical turn towards more nationalistic policies in many countries, this might be seen as a natural extension to maintain critical data and services within more localised and protected infrastructures.
t cht lk data-protected environments. Such movement may accelerate as concern over big tech’ s use of data and intellectual property intensifies with the increasing reach of LLM developers’ data grab. Private clouds consisting of private VDI, AI and data services might be a way to retain control at the organisational level. Given the geopolitical turn towards more nationalistic policies in many countries, this might be seen as a natural extension to maintain critical data and services within more localised and protected infrastructures.
Such control would be strengthened by the utilisation of open source solutions, an approach being undertaken by an increasing number of organisations in light of the recent changes with leading vendor VMware, now owned by Broadcom. Last year the company divested its VDI end user compute business and refocused on enterprise customers with challenging price rises and terms which are rumoured to grow even tougher with a new higher level of entry.
VMware’ s rebrand, now Omnissa, is undertaking its own post-acquisition round of layoffs and has yet to prove itself a long-term viable option, with many customers retaining dependence on other VMware products.
Other VDI vendors, such as Citrix and Nutanix, remain stable, but cost and complexity put the services out of reach of many SMEs, especially in the current economic environment.
Shifting beyond on-premises infrastructure
We don’ t yet know how the VDI landscape is going to be impacted by the increased use of AI-informed services, but in many ways, it is positioned to enable a seamless transition than those organisations still wedded to physical on-premises infrastructure. appeal for the environmentally minded alongside its practical attractions.
Primarily, resources within a VDI environment can be reassigned to other services, enabling virtual devices to be scaled for specific tasks and underlying hardware to be re-employed should demand shift; another aspect which supports sustainability goals. Of course, there can be no guarantees, but organisations will want to avoid replacing expensive infrastructure too soon – so building in potential flexibility now makes much more sense.
A volatile market
There have been pre-AI informed shifts in the VDI market in recent years, with a certain level of reshoring as some organisations depart the public cloud for greener, less expensive and more comfortably
Centralised and more easily secured infrastructure also reduces attack vectors and helps simplify the protection of organisational data and privately trained AI models. This element will be salient to most companies and important in the resistance to big tech AI appropriation.
76 INTELLIGENTCIO APAC www. intelligentcio. com