Enterprise IT teams have been stuck with a painful choice:

Try to run unified communications tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or contact center platforms inside Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and accept degraded performance

Or manage them separately with different access controls, tools, and security policies

Either way, IT loses. So does the business.

The Problem: VDI Was Never Built for Real-Time Communications

Most UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) and CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) platforms rely on real-time, bi-directional audio and video. But traditional VDI environments break this experience.

Why?

Because VDI introduces:

• Excess latency—adding 60–120ms on top of your voice/video stream
• Resource contention—media processing competes with everything else in the virtual desktop
• Protocol mismatch—legacy display protocols like RDP and ICA were never designed for high-quality, two-way communication

The result is choppy calls, audio lag, dropped sessions, and unhappy agents. For contact centers and remote workers, that’s a non-starter.

Recent research from NetScout shows just how critical this issue is: 97% of enterprises suffered a major UCaaS incident or outage in 2023, each lasting hours and disrupting core communications systems. That led to productivity or revenue losses above $10,000 for nearly two-thirds of respondents‍. Half of large enterprises even reported losing $100,000 to $1 million-plus during these outages.

Plugins Don’t Solve the Problem

Some vendors offer media offloading or redirection hacks but these are fragile and inconsistent. You still need:

• Complex endpoint agents
• Custom routing rules
• Risky workarounds that break under load

Despite the effort, performance issues remain. According to that same research, between 37% and 55% of IT teams still say UCaaS platforms are a leading source of helpdesk tickets and that resolving issues often takes hours or days.

What IT Leaders Can Do Differently

If you're managing UCaaS or CCaaS apps today, you don’t need to keep fighting VDI to make them work.

Modern app delivery platforms, like Sonet.io, are making it possible to run real-time communications securely, from any browser, on any device, without infrastructure overhead or endpoint installs.

This approach lets IT teams:

• Support voice and video workloads without compromising quality
• Maintain centralized security and session controls
• Reduce complexity for both users and admins

Real-time communication shouldn't require real-time support tickets. If your current environment can’t keep up, it may be time to explore a different model.

Ready to see the difference?

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