In September 2022, The Digital Workspace Ecosystem Alliance (DWEA) had its first annual survey to gauge the current state of digital workspace adoption, benefits, and challenges. The survey was completed by 2,660 digital workspace professionals globally, making it one of the largest digital workspace-focused surveys to date. DWEA is a collaboration between technology leaders aiming to help organizations enable secure productivity for their partners and customers.
There’s a lot of great information to dig into in the full report which you can download here, but I want to focus on what I think is the most interesting data point from the report. Only 6.2% of organizations surveyed have fully executed their digital workspace strategy. We’ve heard for years that “This is the year for VDI,” but why are the numbers so low if the interest has gone up?
While only 6% of organizations surveyed have fully executed their strategy for a Digital Workspace, 44.7% are in the process of deploying their strategy, and 36.9% have already deployed it. This shows that many organizations are in the process, but for one reason or another they’ve yet to fully deploy their strategy.
“Of all the organizations who weighed in on the DWEA survey, only 6.2% had fully executed their digital workspace strategy by that point. To put that in perspective, more than 8 out of every 10 organizations are either unprepared to properly realize their digital workspace strategy or even have a cohesive strategy to begin with.”
A common theme throughout the report is the struggle organizations are having as they adopt new technologies. We were all forced to adapt to the growing needs of a remote workforce and implement what we could to function. Modernizing the legacy workspaces, all the way to the applications deployed, is proving to be a bigger hurdle than most have expected.
“One lingering hurdle for organizations is legacy technology and the inevitable issues that it entails. In addition, 36.9% of respondents said that keeping applications up to date was a critical concern in their hybrid desktop environment. Another 21.4% cited the management of legacy applications as a key challenge. What this points to is either a need to eliminate legacy software altogether or to find a way to offer it to users that streamlines that overall management and distribution. Given that legacy apps are still pivotal to many organizations’ operations, the latter seems like the better option.”
The dream of completely removing your legacy apps, while aspirational, is an unrealistic move for most large enterprises. Decades of homegrown apps, and a fear of what will or won’t work is a very important reality to consider. In addition, most orgs will prioritize the development of new services and applications, rather than investing in upgrading every legacy application. Our discussions with customers and partners have found this to be very true, and a large reason many are taking the proper steps before migrating.
DaaS, VDI, the cloud, are indeed the future, but when your enterprise has years of applications, and incomplete information of what is used on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t become the easy fix you might want. Applications are how you get your job done, and not every application is going to work on every solution. You need to find the solution for your organization, and work on ways to test, package and modernize when possible.
This first annual survey sheds light on the current state of digital workspace adoption and the challenges organizations face. While very few surveyed have fully executed their digital workspace strategy, a majority are in the process of deploying their strategy and have already, or will soon, reach the stalling point that the application problem causes. The struggle organizations face as they adopt new technologies can be solved with automation, but you must act and plan for this. Ultimately, finding the right solution for your organization and working on ways to test, package, and modernize legacy applications will be critical in realizing the benefits of digital workspaces.
Rimo3 solves many of these problems, and has helped organizations adopt new workspaces more quickly, while giving you the insights on your Windows applications that you need to confidently deploy and move forward.
Check out the full report: https://www.digitalworkspacealliance.com/state-of-the-digital-workspace-2023
Watch deep dives into the report: https://www.digitalworkspacealliance.com/2023-dwea-video-series