Desktop Virtualization Market in Retail - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

Desktop Virtualization Market in Retail - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The global desktop virtualization market in the retail industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 58.24% over the forecast period (2021-2026). Desktop virtualization has become a mainstream strategy for companies of all sizes. According to Oxford Economics, 83% of the large retailers are considering digital transformation as a core business goal. Oxford also highlighted the traction from small and midsize retailers (59%) and their belief in digital transformation.

Key Highlights

• As digital transformation is arguably at its fiercest within the retail sector, the established 'bricks-and-mortar' retailer is likely to focus on boosting store activity, improving profitability, and driving online sales through e-commerce and customer engagement investments. IT technologies, like Desktop virtualization, have been mainly adopted by large retailers and hypermarkets with multiple stores across regions. Mydin, a Malaysia-based supermarket chain, Rakuten, a Japanese e-commerce company, and Danier Leather, the Canadian leather goods retailer are some notable retailers to recognize the need to build a robust IT architecture, by improving server utilization and enhancing application performance, to facilitate better delivery of their products and services.
• Further, a new report by Transunion subsidiary Iovation shows that online retail fraud surged 29% during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend around the world in 2019, from year-ago figures, as hackers and other bad actors moved to take advantage of growing use of mobile and other e-commerce shopping methods. 15% of e-commerce transactions between Thanksgiving and CyberMonday may have been fraudulent, and Black Friday saw a spike, with about 25% of the suspected fraudulent transactions taking place. Fraudsters are increasingly using mobile emulators to appear more legitimate before perpetrating other attacks. To prevent such a threat, the rise of desktop virtualization is needed in the retail sector.
• Further, players are investing in desktop virtualization, which significantly assists in the growth of the market. In August 2019, TechSoup announced that it had received a USD 2.5 million grant from VMware Foundation to support initiatives to significantly expand its offerings and nearly double the number of nonprofit organizations it serves. VMware has led a group of Bay Area technology corporations, which includes Okta, Box, Adobe, and Cisco, to provide a USD 500,000 grant for the development of TechSoup's Digital Transformation Initiative Programme. Furthermore, facilitating robust connectivity and secure data access is a vital requirement in the retail sector.
• Moreover, like the rest of the globe, the retail industry is in the midst of a major crisis as COVID-19 continues to rage on. With stores forced to close in much of the country, retailers have struggled to keep up with shopper demand while the industry's biggest distribution channel remains under wraps. But the provider of the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution is assisting the retailers in establishing connectivity and communication. Players such as VMware, Microsoft, and others are actively monitoring the ongoing developments of the COVID-19 outbreak and taking precautions to address the business needs of their key retail customers who are in VMware facilities.

Key Market TrendsHosted Virtual Desktop Accounts for Significant Market Share

• HVD is used to connect applications to the data stored on remote servers. The (cloud) service provider is held responsible for data storage, backup, upgrade, and security. Virtual desktops have become an integral part of omnichannel strategies in recent years in the retail sector.
• Further, for retailers committing to cloud-first strategies, Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) is the perfect opportunity to embrace that modern workspace. While traditional remote desktop services have enabled companies to streamline desktop management and resources, WVD takes things one step further by providing a full-fat Windows 10 and Office 365 experience for every user in the organization. While many retailers already use Microsoft Azure to deliver their virtual desktop infrastructure, WVD eliminates the task of managing multiple virtual machines and host pools.
• Audionova, which is a Dutch company, is one of Europe's leading hearing aid retailers. It has over 1,300 shops in 11 countries across the continent and is always exploring expansion opportunities. The company decided to switch its desktop support to a VDI-style operation. This had the benefit of allowing more than a thousand individual machines to be configured and controlled from a single location. Players such as Citrix and VMware are currently the market leaders. Its products -Citrix XenDesktop and VMware Horizon offer sufficient capabilities to meet the demands of retail needs. It provides better user experience in a variety of cases, as the offerings cover all aspects of customers' needs.
• The competitors are also focused on incorporating Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with their cloud workspace, for expanding the capabilities of performance monitoring, improving client experience with device performance, and identifying integration with the delivery of VDI on converged and hyper-converged infrastructure platforms. In April 2020, HPE released a more powerful virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution and offering flexible financing terms and new pre-configured solutions to increase flexibility and accelerate delivery for customers. HPE's fleet of VDI and digital workspace solutions support a wide range of user requirements across retail, manufacturing, etc.

North America is Expected to Hold Major Share

• North America has been a pioneer in the desktop virtualization solution adoption in the market, due to the increasing adoption of social media, mobile technology, advanced analytics, cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) across diverse sectors, such as manufacturing, retail, etc. Moreover, the region has a strong foothold of virtualization software vendors, contributing to the growth of the market. Some of them include VMware Inc., Citrix Systems, Oracle Corporation, and SolarWinds Corporation.
• With an increase in small scale retail stores in the United States, the adoption of desktop virtualization tends to increase year-on-year. In the New York retail sector, the leasing deal volume is growing at an average of 10%, with food and beverage leading and apparel. Also, e-commerce brands are increasingly setting up shop as brick-and-mortar establishments.
• Retail digital transformation is a critical focus of a newly launched innovation and research center that Tata Consultancy Services unveiled in New York. In June 2019, TCS launched the center for retail transformation. This center, TCS Pace Port, is the second such facility TCS has started and the USD 20.9 billion company's first in North America. TCS Pace Port New York will emphasize digital retail transformation in a top market for the industry.
• With the outbreak of COVID-19, as many as 25,000 retail stores in the United States are expected to permanently close this year as consumer demand for discretionary items stalls, and more people shift to online shopping. Retailers are facing a daunting multitude of short-term challenges around health and safety, supply chain, labor force, cash flow, consumer demand, and marketing. Instances such as this are expected to hinder the desktop virtualization market in retail in the region.

Competitive Landscape

The Desktop Virtualization Market in Retail is quite fragmented due to the presence of a large number of players. Some key players in the market include Dell Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Vmware Inc., Red Hat Inc., etc. Technological advancements in the market are also bringing sustainable competitive advantage to the companies. The market is also witnessing various partnerships and mergers.

• May 2020 - Vmware Inc., introduced the 2nd generation of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC to support high density and high-performance data center use cases. This new host type is optimal for hosting workloads with more substantial CPU, memory, and storage demands such as Database, AI/ML applications, and Virtual Desktop-type workloads. VMware Cloud on Dell is now fully certified for VMware Horizon to deliver virtual desktops on-premises, at the edge, or in the datacenter.
• September 2019 - Microsoft has announced that Windows Virtual Desktop is now available worldwide. Windows Virtual Desktop is a service that delivers simplified management, a multi-session Windows 10 experience, optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus, and support for Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops and apps. With Windows Virtual Desktop, users can deploy and scale the Windows desktops and apps on Azure in minutes.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support

Companies Mentioned

Citrix Systems Inc.
Toshiba Corporation
Red Hat Inc. (IBM Corporation )
Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd
Microsoft Corporation
Parallels International GmbH
Dell Inc.
Ncomputing, Inc.
Ericom Software Inc.
Tems, Inc
Vmware Inc.

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