Top 10 Insights from the 2024 State of EUC Report by DaaS Like A Pro

The wonderful team from DaaS Like A Pro (which includes Dizzion’s very own, Ruben Spruijt) recently released their latest State of EUC Report for 2024 – 2025. The report is based on the largest independent survey (also conducted by DaaS Like A Pro) focused on the end-user computing (EUC) industry.  

For those of you who haven’t had a chance to read the report, I encourage you to download it here and check it out for yourself.  

As usual, the data and results from the report were very enlightening, so I decided to write down my top 10 insights and take-aways in hopes it can help you plan the next step in your DaaS journey!

Disclaimer: The State of EUC Report, along with my insights, are ultimately based on a relatively small sample size of respondents (N=254) from the EUC industry who participated in this year’s DaaS Like A Pro survey.

1. DaaS Usage Spanning Multiple Market Segments Evenly

This year’s survey shows that organizations of all sizes, from small businesses (<250 employees) to large enterprises (up to 24,999 employees) are adopting Desktop as a Service (DaaS). This even distribution not only shows how mature DaaS solutions have become, but more importantly, it signals that businesses across diverse market segments now view DaaS as a long-term, strategic IT investment.

2. DaaS is More Than Just for Supporting Remote Work

While remote work continues to lead the way with 14% of respondents saying it’s the biggest driver of DaaS adoption (down from 16% in last year’s survey), other drivers such as ease of management, fast user onboarding/desktop provisioning, enhanced security, device agnosticism, and ease of use for end-user were not far behind, with each at around 10%. I think what this shows is that while many organizations may have initially adopted DaaS to support remote work – the security, agility, and operational benefits of DaaS give it staying power.

3. Cost Remains the Biggest Barrier

Cost remains the most significant challenge for organizations considering DaaS, with 35% of respondents indicating it as their top concern (up from 21% in last year’s survey)—more than double the next challenge of integrating with existing infrastructure (16%). This frankly comes as no surprise when organizations are also deploying larger and larger instance types, including GPU-enabled instances (see below). This is directly aligned with a continued shift that we see where organizations are leveraging DaaS solutions to address more desktop-replace use cases (even for power users) compared to just delivering individual virtual apps. And as the use cases and instances for DaaS continue to get bigger, the cloud infrastructure costs will continue to dominate the overall TCO. Having the flexibility to shop and quickly move your digital workspaces around across multiple providers is critical in ensuring your TCO is minimized.

4. Larger Instance Sizes Becoming the Norm

According to this year’s survey, 4 vCPU, 16GB RAM is now the most popular configuration for single-session Windows at 25% - surpassing 2 vCPU, 8GB RAM for the first time (24%). In multi-session environments, 4 vCPU, 32GB RAM remains unchanged as the top choice. With 8 cores, 3.0 GHz, and 16GB RAM quickly becoming the baseline specs for new laptops – it follows suit that new operating systems and applications will naturally require and consume more resources. While the enterprise app and desktop virtualization space has been generally shielded from the rapid increase in compute requirements over the past couple of decades (mostly due to the limited use cases that were addressed with VDI/DaaS) - that is no longer the case. Successful deployments and user adoption will hinge on digital workspaces having enough compute resources to deliver a comparable experience as a user’s physical laptop.

5. GPU Usage, While Still Relatively Low, Sees Significant Growth

Unsurprisingly, this year’s survey also showed a sharp rise in GPU and vGPU-enabled instances, with 52% of respondents now incorporating GPUs/vGPUs in at least some part of their DaaS deployments – compared to only 18% just a year ago! Since almost all new laptops/workstations have a discrete GPU these days – newer operating systems and applications simply expect them to be available and are designed to take advantage of them. And as AI/ML becomes more and more integral to operating systems and applications, dedicated NPUs will quickly become the standard as well. So don’t be surprised when you start seeing NPU-powered virtual desktops in the not-so-distant future!

6. Hybrid Cloud Deployments on the Rise

Hybrid cloud is gaining traction, with 22% of respondents already using a hybrid model and another 27% considering it. Although public cloud still leads at 42%, the growing interest in hybrid cloud shows that cost concerns are very real and prompting action. From my perspective, EUC is absolutely perfect for a hybrid model. Use cases where usage is consistent, such as for internal task and knowledge workers – deploy those in your private cloud. For seasonal usage scenarios (education, retail, etc.), contractors and consultants, and developers – that is what public cloud is there for. Infrastructure flexibility is the name of the game when it comes to the future of DaaS, this is why Dizzion supports deployments on AWS, GCP, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

7. Azure Dominates Public Cloud Deployments

Azure leads the public cloud space with 43% of DaaS deployments, followed by AWS at 14%, Google Cloud at 5%, and IBM Cloud at 2%. Certainly, the rapid growth and adoption of AVD and Windows 365 is a key driver. However, it’s no secret that Microsoft’s positioning regarding their software licensing terms for Windows and O365 is a big reason why many DaaS customers are effectively locked into Azure. However, recent concessions by Microsoft (see here and here), driven by pressure from EU anti-trust regulators, may mean there is a light at the end of the tunnel for organizations looking for alternatives.

8. VMware ESXi Leads Private Cloud Deployments...for Now.

VMware by Broadcom remains the top choice for private cloud deployments at 37% (however, that is down from 49% in last year’s survey), followed by Microsoft Hyper-V at 16%, and Nutanix at 15%. But as VMware customers continue to flock away, I think we would all expect this percentage to continue to decrease. Customers and service providers using Horizon, in my opinion, were put in the toughest position as they had to navigate the changes at VMware as well as work with a new company in Omnissa. As one of the largest Horizon service providers in the world, Dizzion is intimately aware of the challenges that these organizations are facing. This is why we recently partnered with AWS and Omnissa to offer our new Navigator Migration Service to help organizations quickly migrate their Omnissa Horizon deployment from VMware to Amazon WorkSpaces Core.

9. The Debate: Virtual Apps vs. Virtual Desktops

The survey reveals a close split between organizations that believe the future lies in virtual apps (48%) versus those that prefer virtual desktops (41%). However, the majority (35%) of respondents indicate that they currently have less than 5% of their total application set deployed as virtual apps. If you were to ask me before the pandemic whether virtual apps or desktops were the future of enterprise EUC, I most likely would’ve said virtual apps. And that answer, at the time, was driven by the shift toward SaaS and organizations presumably only needing to use DaaS to deliver one-off Windows apps.  

However, sitting here in 2024, I believe the future of enterprise EUC is almost certainly virtual desktops.

Here’s why:

• Shift from Tactical to Strategic Use Cases. Remote work, improved Internet connections (U.S. saw an average Internet speed increase of 40% post-pandemic compared to pre-pandemic), and DaaS technology improvements rapidly shifted the playing field for DaaS from tactical/point use cases to much more strategic/desktop-replace use cases.

• Rise of BYO Device Programs. A study from 2021 showed nearly 82% of organizations have adopted some sort of BYO device program. The same study showed that user productivity increased by a whopping 68% when using their own device. As unmanaged devices continue to increase in popularity, sandboxing access to sensitive apps and data from the endpoint device becomes paramount.

• Employee Monitoring, Productivity Insights, and DEX. Whether you like it or not, employee surveillance, monitoring, and analytics is a big business these days, more and more employers prefer to rely on hard data to ensure their employees are remaining productive. Effectively tracking this data typically requires the users to do their work within a single operating system.

• AI Adoption. Employees are adopting AI faster than employers can keep up. When they do catch-up, ensuring sensitive data stay offs of unapproved AI models will be a top priority. And, like I mentioned above, more and more AI tools will be directly integrated with the OS and the overall user workflow across multiple applications.

10. Single-Session Windows Surpasses Multi-Session

For the first time, single-session Windows (49%) has overtaken multi-session Windows (45%) as the most popular OS model for DaaS according to the survey. For those who are unaware, the concept of multi-session Windows was pioneered by Citrix in the early 1990s, and it would become the standard model for enterprise app and desktop virtualization for the next three decades. However, as we continue to trend toward more desktop-replace use cases, more user personalization requirements, and more resource requirements – it only makes sense that the usage of single-session Windows with DaaS will grow faster than multi-session Windows. For the same reasons, I also expect persistent desktops will eventually overtake non-persistent desktops as well.

Final Thoughts

The DaaS Like A Pro State of EUC Report highlights key trends that are shaping the present and future of the EUC industry – providing incredibly valuable insights for any organization interested in DaaS. For those of you with decades of app and desktop virtualization experience – it serves as a great litmus test for whether your current strategy is aligned with where the industry is going next. For those of you that are just getting started, hopefully it helps you streamline your first successful deployment!

I see a very bright future ahead for DaaS and EUC and I hope my insights into this year’s report were helpful to you and your organization in some way.  

And if you’re curious about what we are doing here at Dizzion and why Gartner just named us a Visionary in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Desktop as a Service, I strongly encourage you to try a Dizzion digital workspace now (ready in seconds) and see for yourself.

With that, stay ahead, stay agile, and let’s DaaS like pros together!

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