You didn't want virtual desktops. You wanted controlled access.
If VDI's job in your company is secure access to apps and desktops, the portal does that job without the farm.
Some VDI is bought for the desktop. Most of it is bought for the access.
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) earns its complexity when the desktop itself is the product: regulated locked-down images, GPU workstations, one standardised environment for everybody. But a large share of real-world VDI deployments exist for a much narrower reason. People, often third parties, needed to reach internal applications without company data landing on their devices.
- A heavy answer to a narrow questionFor that job a desktop farm costs image maintenance, capacity management, licensing, and a login experience nobody loves.
- Deliver the applications insteadZero Trust Application Access (ZTAA) publishes the apps themselves inside governed, recorded, watermarked sessions where data doesn't persist locally: web apps natively, Windows apps through published remote desktop (RDP), terminals over SSH or VNC.
- Tiles, not a desktop in a desktopThe user gets the applications they came for, and IT retires the farm for every use case that never needed one.
You didn’t want virtual desktops. You wanted controlled access.
If the farm exists to deliver apps, it is the expensive part
Image maintenance, capacity, licensing and a login nobody loves — all of it wrapped around the tiles the user actually came for. Deliver the apps directly, inside recorded, watermarked sessions where nothing persists locally, and the wrapper is what retires.
arjun.m · contractor · own laptop
- Jira
- Slack
- Bitbucket
- Zoom
- Notion
- Dropbox
recorded · watermarked · nothing written to the laptop
where the desktop IS the product, the farm stays — and gets gated
The farm shrinks towhat it was actually for.
Three things change when the access job leaves the desktop farm.
The farm shrinks
The access-driven share of VDI cost and toil retires, and what remains is the desktop work that genuinely needed a desktop.
Clientless for outsiders
Third-party and personal-device cases move to browser-based sessions with nothing installed and nothing left behind.
Gates on what stays
The true VDI you keep sits behind the same identity, device and recording checks as everything else you publish.
vdi alternative, answered.
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Keep the farm for what needs a farm.
Book a demo and we will separate the desktops you genuinely need from the access you were really buying.
Regulated, air-gapped, or on-premise? See deployment options