This article is a special guest contribution by George Crump, Chief Marketing Officer at Verge.io.
Avoid “The Big Dig”—Build the VDI Chunnel Instead
For organizations moving away from VMware Horizon (now Omnissa) or Citrix, changing virtual desktop platforms often stems from increasing licensing costs, shrinking support options, or uncertain long-term roadmaps. But switching VDI platforms isn’t just a licensing conversation—it’s an inflection point—one that opens the door to rethinking how your entire virtualization stack is built.
And that’s a good thing.
Virtual desktop environments are only as good as the infrastructure that supports them. Performance, cost, reliability, and manageability depend on the choices made at the hypervisor, storage, and network layers. If you replace the VDI broker but leave everything unchanged, you risk carrying legacy inefficiencies into your future environment.
But evaluating your entire stack can feel like initiating “The Big Dig”—expensive, disruptive, and never-ending. The smarter approach is what we’ll call “The Chunnel”—a strategic, engineered tunnel that connects your current platform to a better future with minimal surface disruption.
Rethinking the VDI Hypervisor
Traditional hypervisors were not designed with VDI in mind. They treat desktops like just another VM and rely on add-on products for storage and networking. These platforms also use licensing models that penalize growth—charging per core, socket, or feature tier.
In contrast, modern infrastructure platforms are built for density and efficiency. Integrating the hypervisor directly with storage and networking in a lightweight software layer reduces resource overhead, simplifies management, and eliminates unnecessary licensing complexity. These platforms run on your existing hardware, so you’re not starting from scratch.
Rethinking Storage
Storage is one of the most significant pain points in VDI. Boot storms, deduplication bottlenecks, and RAID rebuild delays are not technical nuisances—they’re user experience killers. To fix this, organizations must over-engineer their environments with expensive all-flash arrays or high-end SANs.
But what if your storage layer was built into the virtualization platform itself? Efficient alternatives eliminate the need for external storage appliances by directly integrating distributed, high-performance storage into the hypervisor layer, solving VDI boot storms. This improves I/O performance and resilience and enables VDI environments to run on internal drives with bare-metal responsiveness, reducing cost per desktop by as much as 10X.
Rethinking the Network
Traditional SDN platforms require separate appliances and dedicated controller VMs, imposing per-port or per-core licensing. At the edge, where VDI expands into branch offices or remote learning environments, this overhead becomes unsustainable.
By embedding SDN directly into the infrastructure software, modern platforms eliminate the need for separate routers, firewalls, or overlay controllers. Policies can be applied per VM, per site, or user without deploying more hardware. Security improves, complexity drops, and expansion becomes a configuration, not a procurement cycle.
Seamless Migration is Key
None of this matters if migration is painful. Legacy platforms require you to “rip and replace” infrastructure components and duplicate hardware to test new platforms.
An efficient modern alternative should support non-disruptive, in-place migration. Administrators can replicate workloads from existing platforms into the new environment with continuous synchronization. Testing can occur parallel with production, allowing thorough validation before a rapid cutover. This approach reduces downtime, simplifies planning, and accelerates time to value.
And Of Course, Rethink Your VDI Delivery Software
Your virtual desktop software delivery platform is the user’s front door to everything—efficiency and flexibility matter. Legacy platforms like Horizon and Citrix rely on complex infrastructures, named-user licensing, and Windows-only backends that drive up costs and restrict how desktops and apps are delivered.
A modern alternative should support Windows and Linux applications, offer persistent and non-persistent desktops, and simplify administration with a single console. Licensing should scale with usage (e.g., concurrent users), not penalize for growth. It should eliminate the need for third-party gateway services, databases, or complex policy engines. Inuvika OVD Empresa does all of this and more. Subscriptions are all on a concurrent user basis. Built on Linux, it delivers Windows and Linux apps and desktops at a TCO that is less than 50% of other virtual desktop solutions.
Rethinking your VDI software means choosing a solution that aligns with today’s dynamic IT environments—not one built for decades-old data centers.
Don’t Just Replace VDI —Reimagine it
When switching VDI platforms, don’t settle for the same architecture in new packaging. Use this opportunity to build a better foundation for your users and IT team.
Verge.io and Inuvika provide a jointly validated solution that integrates infrastructure and virtual desktop delivery into a modern, efficient platform. VergeOS replaces legacy hypervisors, vSAN, and third-party networking tools with a unified, lightweight platform that runs on your existing hardware. Inuvika OVD provides a high-performance, Linux-based desktop, and application delivery environment that eliminates the need for most Microsoft infrastructure components or additional licensing.
Together, these solutions give you the performance, cost savings, and flexibility legacy vendors promised—but never delivered.
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