5 Signs Your Company Needs to Ditch On-Prem VDI (and What to Do Next)

Is your company still holding onto on-prem Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) because it feels like the safer option?

If so, you might be ignoring the hidden costs, security risks, and performance limitations that are quietly draining your IT resources.

On-prem VDI was once the gold standard for secure remote access.

But today, it’s an outdated, expensive, and rigid solution that can’t keep up with modern business needs.

Here are five clear signs it’s time to move on.

1. Your IT Team Spends More Time Managing VDI Than Innovating

On-prem VDI demands constant maintenance-patches, updates, troubleshooting, and capacity planning. Your IT team is likely spending hours ensuring everything runs smoothly, rather than working on strategic projects that drive business growth.

What this means for you:

• More downtime and disruptions
• Increased IT workload and burnout
• Slower response to business needs

IT teams spend 30–50% of their time maintaining on-prem VDI infrastructure, including patching, troubleshooting, and scaling. That’s valuable time that could be spent driving innovation instead.

2. Your VDI Costs Are Skyrocketing

Running on-prem VDI means paying for expensive servers, storage, licenses, and maintenance -whether or not you’re fully utilizing them. As your business grows, scaling on-prem infrastructure becomes a financial headache.

Cost red flags:

• High upfront capital expenses
• Ongoing hardware upgrades
• Paying for unused capacity

On-prem VDI deployments cost businesses up to 2–3x more than cloud-based alternatives due to hardware, licensing, and maintenance. Yet, many companies still overpay for unused capacity.

3. Your Remote Workforce Is Struggling with Performance Issues

Latency, connection issues, and slow virtual desktops frustrate employees-especially when accessing apps and data remotely. If your team is complaining about sluggish performance, your on-prem VDI setup isn’t keeping up.

Common complaints:

• Lag when accessing desktops remotely
• Slow application load times
• Connectivity issues during peak hours

73% of remote employees report decreased productivity due to slow virtual desktop performance. The impact? Lower efficiency and frustrated teams.

Read about how Toystack’s GPU-powered solutions improve workflows

4. You’re Struggling with Compliance and Security Risks

On-prem VDI may feel secure, but outdated security protocols and lack of real-time monitoring can leave your company exposed to cyber threats.

Meeting compliance standards like ISO 27001, SOC 2, or GDPR also becomes complex with on-prem infrastructure.

Security gaps in on-prem VDI:

• Delayed patching and updates
• Higher risk of ransomware and insider threats
• Compliance challenges for remote teams

68% of data breaches involve endpoints like virtual desktops, making unpatched on-prem VDI environments a security risk.

Learn more about our security and compliance certifications.

5. Scaling Your Infrastructure Feels Like a Nightmare

Need to onboard new employees or scale operations quickly? On-prem VDI forces you to buy more servers, increase storage, and configure everything manually-making scaling slow and expensive.

Scalability challenges:

• Long deployment times for new users
• Overprovisioning resources “just in case”
• Expensive infrastructure scaling

A Gartner report predicts that by 2026, 60% of organizations will have abandoned traditional on-prem VDI for cloud-based virtual desktops. Companies that fail to adapt risk being left behind.

Check out our case study with Ecartes to see how businesses are scaling effortlessly.

Final Thoughts

If any of these signs sound familiar, it’s time to ditch on-prem VDI. Moving to a cloud-based Virtual OS not only cuts costs but also improves performance, security, and scalability-allowing your IT team to focus on innovation rather than maintenance.

Originally published at https://blogs.toystack.ai on February 5, 2025.