Now, almost 80% of businesses plan to allow remote work fully or partially after the pandemic.

From 2019 to 2021, remote working and WFH has moved from a frowned upon the situation to the new normal. The market experienced a huge shift in patterns, the way we work, and workspace efficiency. However, this shift is not easy to implement. Of course, WFH is comfortable for employees and many employers. But, implementing security, scalability, real-time access, and seamless collaboration is not an easy task without the appropriate technology.

Workspace as a Service and Desktop as a Service are both remote working solutions. While these are essentially born from Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, these technologies have become crucial for the industry to work feasibly.

But, choosing between WaaS and DaaS services is difficult. For this reason, this post will evaluate the difference between DaaS and WaaS.

What is Workspace as a Service?

Workspace as a Service (WaaS) is a technology model that originated from Software as a Service. It involves hosting your entire workspace on the cloud and using resources remotely via an internet connection. This architecture secures your infrastructure, reduces hardware dependency, and equips your company to work efficiently.

WaaS or workspace solutions virtualize all your tools, including smartphones, printers, laptops, internet, projectors, monitors, and conference rooms. From your hardware to software needs, your complete workspace is on the cloud.

The Cloud Service Provider handles the maintenance, security, and upgrades. Therefore, your IT team is not really under pressure to manage hardware, software licenses, employee access, and other factors.

How Do Workspace Solutions Work?

In the WaaS solution, your service provider evaluates your organizational needs through a series of assessments. They help you define your business objectives, clear performance requirements and ensure that the required devices and hardware are in the virtualization list.

Once the basic requirement is clarified, the CSP helps you decide the configuration of the workspace solution. This is customized according to your organization's needs, including your hardware needs, resource requirements, etc.

After this, the provider virtualizes your workspace, such as the computers, printers, fax machines, conference rooms, and other hardware and software devices. Following this, the infrastructure is managed and maintained by the provider. They upgrade your configurations, take care of security, and patching.

You can acquire these services as a fixed charge, which can be increased or decreased by the increase and decrease in used resources.

What is Desktop as a Service?

Desktop as a Service (DaaS) is a technology solution powered by Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. This service hosts your desktops, including data and apps, to the cloud and offers internet-based access remotely.

For example, desktops that your employees are currently using are replicated to the cloud server. This means that when your employees need to access desktops, they open a virtual copy called thin clients. You can access these are virtual images on any device, including smartphone, tablet, computer, or laptop.

The Desktop handles the maintenance, security, and upgrades as a Service provider only. Your IT team only needs to think about the internal resources of the company.

Differences Between WaaS and DaaS Services

1. Remote Working

A Workspace solution is delightful for the entire workplace. It provides every required element to employees remotely without any issue. Employees can access facilities from a location and device of their choice. There’s no need to sit at a dedicated desk.

Similarly, Desktop as Service providers offers virtual desktop access from anywhere anytime. Employees can start using these virtual thin clients from any location and device of choice.

2. Data Security

Data security implementation of WaaS and DaaS services on the cloud are similar. This includes:

• TLS 1.3 and 256-bit encryption for data in transmission and at rest.
• Intrusion Detection and Prevention monitoring.
• Regular system and desktop audits to eliminate intrusion.
• Regular OS patching and upgrade to prevent cyberattacks.
• Multi-factor authentication to allow only authorized employees.
• Internal or software firewalls for internal access control.

As far as security is concerned, both WaaS and DaaS services use the provider's experience to manage and control security. This type of architecture gives your IT team optimum control over your security infrastructure. Your IT team can overlook systems and remotely refresh a desktop to eliminate the infection.

3. Cost-Effectiveness

Workspace solutions help you virtualize every hardware in your office, which saves you money. Here’s how:

You can scale and descale resources according to your unique requirements.

You can keep using your devices for longer. Sometimes, hardware parts wear off, or their configurations become obsolete for the business. This increases the cost of business because you need to improve config and purchase new, better hardware. With WaaS, you can simply improve config on the cloud and keep using the same equipment.

Additionally, you can allow BYOD policy, which will allow your employees to use their devices in the office. This helps you reduce money spent on hardware.

For DaaS services, you get the same cost-effectiveness but only for your desktops. You can scale and descale, allow BYOD, and use desktops for longer. Therefore, the cost-effectiveness of both solutions is almost the same.

4. Customizations

With workspace solutions, you can customize your architecture. You can decide on hardware and software to virtualize, including tabs, smart devices, and laptops. Inside these devices, you can define access control and drill into details to create a personal workspace for every team or employee.

With proper planning and customization, you can even optimize your costs.

DaaS services also allow customizing your desktops by deciding configurations for different teams. For example, higher config for the accounting team and simpler for the content team. You can drill down into details and define every hardware, application, and data file access.

Here too, proper customization can help you optimize your costs.

5. Uptime

Since both WaaS and DaaS services are offered through a Desktop as a Service provider or cloud provider, you get optimum uptime. Usually, more than 95%. This means you will face only some hours of downtime in one year and that too planned one. Therefore, your business won’t face any disruption in both cases.

Conclusion

Both WaaS and DaaS services equip your business with the ability to improve scalability, security, remote working efficiency, productivity, availability, and accessibility. Depending on your unique requirements, you can implement one solution. Remember to select the right CSP for implementation. Many benefits of the cloud are restricted by your provider's ability to offer them, such as scalability, uptime, and security. Therefore, spend some time researching the service provider and then enjoy the benefits of DaaS and WaaS.