2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Report for Desktop as a Service

Vendor Strengths and Cautions

Inclusion & Exclusion Criteria

The inclusion criteria have changed from 2025, when vendors could qualify with 150,000 CPU-enabled virtual desktops. This number increased to 200,000 for 2026. In 2025, the inclusion criteria required 30,000 virtual machines under management, which increased to 40,000 in 2026. Gartner expects these criteria to rise in future years. 

To qualify, vendors met the following criteria:

Market participation: Must sell desktop as a service (DaaS) aligning to the market definition.

Market traction: DaaS offering must meet the following criteria:

• Vendor has been active in the virtual desktop infrastructure, server-based computing or desktop as a service market(s) before 1 May 2025 (i.e., at least 12 months tenure).
• DaaS offering(s) and capabilities assessed have been generally available on or before 5 June 2026.
• Vendor must have 200,000 monthly active users of their DaaS offerings on 5 June 2026.
• Vendor must have 40,000 virtual machines under management on 5 June 2026.
• The user and virtual machine volumes must relate to use by organizations; consumer use does not count for inclusion.
• Gartner must have evidence of client inquiry mentioning the vendor’s DaaS offerings.

Regions: DaaS must be available in at least two regions. The regions considered in this Magic Quadrant are:

• North America
  • For the scope of this research, we defined North America as the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
• Europe
  • For the scope of this research, we defined Europe as the sum of Western and Eastern Europe.
  • Gartner defines Western Europe as including the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K. We define Eastern Europe as including the following countries: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Türkiye, and Ukraine.
• Asia (excluding China [Region] but including the Pacific)
  • For the scope of this research, we included Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam
• China [Region]
  • The Chinese mainland
  • Hong Kong
  • Taiwan
• Latin America
  • For the scope of this research, we included Brazil, Chile and Argentina
• Middle East and Africa

Support services: Must be available in each of the regions that the vendor operates within for coverage during daytime working hours (approximately 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) in at least one time zone per region.

Technical capabilities relevant to Gartner clients: Features assessed must be generally available on or before 1 May 2026. Vendors offering DaaS can be in any or all the following configurations:

• Self-assembled DaaS: Self-assembled DaaS services are where the client selects a cloud-based virtualization broker and integrates this with a customer-defined infrastructure as a service.
• Vendor-assembled DaaS:  Vendor-assembled services incorporate a cloud-based virtualization broker integrated with a cloud infrastructure. The vendor is responsible for orchestration of all infrastructure services upon which the virtual desktops operate.
• Vendor-managed DaaS: Vendor-managed DaaS services are where the vendor provides a virtualization platform, cloud infrastructure and the management of virtual desktops. (Note: While system integrators provide these offerings, their services are not covered here. They are covered by the outsourced managed workplace services Magic Quadrant.)

Vendors must include the following services to qualify:

• A managed control plane for the solution as part of the base license or usage fees.
• Any additional management software required to operate the virtual desktop environment.
• Maintenance, updates and upgrades to all cloud infrastructure and management software required to operate the DaaS platform.
• Unique intellectual property (IP) that is critical to DaaS operations and/or user experience. A vendor that solely integrates and orchestrates other vendors’ platforms or services would not qualify.
• A remote desktop protocol to provide secure access from an external user’s device to the DaaS virtual machines.

Additionally, the desktop experience can include:

• A hosted Windows or Linux server operating system that allows multiple sessions per server delivering an individual desktop experience to each user.

• A hosted Windows or Linux server operating system that allows a single session per server delivering a desktop experience to users.
• A hosted Windows or Linux desktop client operating system that allows a single session per operating system virtual machine.
• A hosted Windows or Linux desktop client operating system that allows multiple sessions per operating system virtual machine to deliver individual experiences to each user.
• Persistent or nonpersistent virtual machines that are assigned to an individual or within a pool.

Vendors will not qualify if they only provide these services, though these additional services may be provided:

• Hosted Windows or Linux application virtualization where the application remains on the DaaS infrastructure and is accessed via the remote desktop protocol
• Hosted macOS services.
• Unified workspaces.
• Local hypervisors.
• Managed services.
• Endpoint security and posture checking, which may optionally include workspace biometric assessments.
• Additional value-added features from either their own portfolio of products or third-party products.

Evaluation Criteria

Ability to Execute

Gartner analysts evaluate vendors on the viability of their DaaS offerings, market effectiveness, overall growth, client retention and reputation. 

Product or Service: This criterion looks at the breadth and depth of the vendor’s DaaS offerings and whether its capabilities match what is required by enterprise clients. In the DaaS market, this includes evaluating the provider’s control plane functionality, deployment flexibility (e.g., hybrid vs. cloud-native), supported operating systems, and display protocol performance. It also assesses integration with identity and access management (IAM), endpoint security, and the vendor’s track record of delivering on its roadmap for advanced features like GPU-accelerated desktops and unified communications optimizations.

Overall Viability: This criterion includes an assessment of the organization’s overall financial health, as well as the financial and practical success of the business unit. For DaaS, it considers the likelihood of the organization to continue offering and investing, the organization’s ability to scale, partner scalability, leadership stability, and year-over-year revenue growth. Sales Execution: This criterion looks at the vendor’s capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that supports them. In a DaaS context, this includes deal management, presales technical support for complex cloud migrations, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel (including managed service providers [MSPs] and system integrators [SIs]). Consideration is given to the clarity and competitiveness of the vendor’s packaging and pricing models, conquest sales and the sustainability of growth.

Market Responsiveness / Record: This criterion looks at a vendor’s ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as market dynamics change. For DaaS, this specifically evaluates how well the vendor adapts to evolving hybrid work trends, shifting demands for zero-trust network access (ZTNA), and new hyperscaler capabilities. This criterion also considers tenure in the market, product vision for the future of digital workspaces, value proposition, and the quality of the vendor’s roadmap.

Marketing Execution: This criterion was not rated because brand awareness is currently less of a differentiator for enterprise DaaS buyers compared to core platform functionality and pricing flexibility.

Customer Experience: This criterion covers the products, services, and programs that enable customers to achieve anticipated results. For DaaS, it includes general customer feedback and sentiment (e.g., reviews on Gartner Peer Insights and aggregated feedback from Gartner expert interactions), the availability of customer success services and customer case studies.

Operations: This criterion looks at the ability of the vendor to meet goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure, skills, programs, and systems that enable the organization to efficiently operate and effectively scale. In DaaS, this focuses on the provider’s operational capability to manage and update the underlying virtualization infrastructure, guarantee global availability across different regions, and ensure seamless patching and maintenance without disrupting the end-user experience. It also assesses the size and scalability of the organization, the size and scalability of partners, and the scalability of the platform.

Table 1: Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria

Completeness of Vision

Gartner analysts evaluate vendors on their ability to understand current market opportunities and to create and articulate their vision for future market direction, innovation, customer requirements and competitive forces. Ultimately, vendors are rated on their vision for the future and on how well that maps to Gartner’s position. 

Market understanding: This criterion assesses a vendor’s ability to translate buyer needs into products. In the DaaS market, high-vision vendors anticipate market forces like hybrid work, bring your own device (BYOD), zero trust, AI and the RAM memory crisis. They demonstrate leadership by addressing demands for AI-driven scaling and digital experience monitoring. With rising RAM costs and heavy generative AI footprints straining budgets, vendors are rated on mitigating these pressures through automated memory optimization, dynamic resource allocation and flexible pricing that maintains performance while controlling infrastructure costs. Market understanding is assessed by examining unique value to the market, understanding external market forces, and alignment with customer objectives and use cases.

Marketing strategy: This criterion is not rated because DaaS purchasing decisions are currently driven more by technical architectures, hyperscaler alignments and pricing models than by differentiated marketing campaigns or brand messaging.

Sales strategy: This criterion considers whether the vendor has a sound strategy for selling that uses the appropriate networks. In DaaS, this heavily involves leveraging channel resellers, value-added resellers, cloud marketplaces (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), MSPs and SIs that extend market reach and technical expertise. Consideration is given to the flexibility of pricing and bundling (such as named vs. concurrent user or consumption-based billing), the effectiveness of the channel and strategic partnerships with major public cloud infrastructure providers.

Offering (Product) strategy: This criterion evaluates whether a vendor’s approach to product development emphasizes market differentiation and future requirements. For DaaS, this means evaluating the vendor’s roadmap for multicloud deployment capabilities, advanced display protocol optimizations and integration with IT service management (ITSM) platforms, AI interfaces, endpoint management tools, DEX tools and other relevant tools. Consideration is given to the vendor’s product roadmap quality and whether it shows a clear, well-defined path for evolution and development. Also assessed is product portfolio breadth and depth to determine if it offers sufficient capabilities to meet client needs.

Business model: This criterion is not rated because DaaS business models have largely standardized around cloud-based subscription and consumption pricing, leaving little room for meaningful strategic differentiation among enterprise-grade vendors.

Vertical industry strategy: This criterion is not rated because DaaS is primarily evaluated as a horizontal technology. While specific compliance and regulatory certifications are needed for verticals like healthcare or finance, the core workspace delivery mechanism remains consistent across all industries.

Innovation: This criterion looks at the layout of resources, expertise or capital for investment and preemptive purposes. In the DaaS space, this considers the strength of the offering roadmap regarding next-generation workspace technologies. This includes using AI and machine learning for predictive infrastructure scaling and DEX, automated image and patch management, continuous authentication for endpoint security and unique protocol enhancements to seamlessly handle unified communications (like Teams or Zoom). Additionally, this assessment includes market-specific investment, the use of newer technologies, such as automation and AI, and whether the vendor shows clear indications in its future outlook toward innovation (product or business model innovation).Geographic Strategy: This criterion looks at the provider’s strategy to direct resources and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside its native region. For DaaS, a critical component is the vendor’s ability to leverage global hyperscaler data center regions to guarantee low-latency connections for end users and ensure data residency/sovereignty compliance for global workforces. Additional consideration is given to the tailoring of go-to-market strategies to address regional cloud adoption maturity and the depth of regional channel partners.

Table 2: Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Quadrant Descriptions

Leaders
Leaders exhibit strong execution and vision scores and have proven their success in the market by gaining market share. In the DaaS market, Leaders have successfully shown they can attract clients new to desktop virtualization, as well as those migrating from traditional on-premises VDI solutions to cloud-based alternatives. They address a broad range of enterprise use cases from basic task workers to high-end or AI-driven workloads. Leaders have established scale across multiple global regions. They bring continuous innovation to their offerings, such as advanced automation and predictive resource scaling, and have significant investment in their DaaS capabilities to manage evolving enterprise demands.

Challengers
Challengers exhibit a strong set of technologies, marketing and sales execution, and intellectual property, similar to Leaders, but they tailor their DaaS solutions to specific market segments, regions, or use cases. For example, a Challenger in the DaaS market might possess a highly robust platform but limit its operations primarily to specific geographies or rely heavily on specific telecom or MSP channels. They may be satisfied with serving their current customer base or market, or they may lack the strategic support, broader public cloud integration vision, or desire to compete in the overall enterprise Leaders quadrant. 

Visionaries
Visionaries exhibit strong capabilities in their current offerings and a complete set of functionalities to address common use cases. However, the vendor’s size, size of its installed base, platform breadth, or integration points make it appropriate for some, but not all, enterprise buyers. Characteristics of Visionaries in this Magic Quadrant include a broad range of forward-looking DaaS capabilities such as advanced AI-assisted operations, sovereign cloud architectures, or deep DEX monitoring integrations. Visionaries have the opportunity to scale, are applicable to all industry verticals, and have broad global reach, even if their current operational execution or market share lags behind Leaders. 

Niche Players
Niche Players exhibit leadership in specific use cases, market segments, regions or verticals. However, their offerings fail to provide a breadth of features that make them relevant to all buyers, regardless of vertical, geographic market, or use case. Characteristics observed in Niche Players for this DaaS Magic Quadrant include a tight focus on compliance-driven environments or a dominant focus on specific regional markets or industry verticals. This quadrant also includes vendors with capabilities that, while available for sale as direct DaaS offerings, are commonly deployed by others to enable white-label DaaS solutions.

Context

As desktop as a service (DaaS) solutions replace traditional on-premises VDI and are increasingly adopted by enterprises for larger, more complex use cases, many buyers are consolidating their end-user computing platforms to support hybrid and multicloud environments. This Magic Quadrant offers an objective comparison of leading products for a broad range of buyers. Since requirements vary, we recommend reviewing the accompanying Critical Capabilities for Desktop as a Service to match your specific needs. Use this research to align your priorities — such as expertise, vision, technology, and cost— with the most suitable vendor, regardless of their quadrant placement.

This Magic Quadrant places emphasis on DaaS providers’ abilities to meet the complex security, compliance, and multiregional needs of global organizations, with a strong focus on data sovereignty. We have assessed vendors located in North America, Europe and Asia (including China). Some vendors sell globally and others regionally. The Magic Quadrant’s evaluations reflect the needs of most of Gartner’s audience for DaaS, which is primarily in North America, Europe and Asia (outside China).

Over the past 12 months, DaaS providers have continued to acquire or develop adjacent technology in order to offer a broader suite of capabilities. Although the core capability of a DaaS solution is to support getting users connected to a virtual desktop via a managed control plane, vendors assessed in this Magic Quadrant scored better if they also had advanced capabilities in critical adjacent areas such as hybrid orchestration, DEX monitoring, and artificial intelligence (AI). Specifically, high-scoring vendors demonstrated a clear vision and capabilities for AI-driven operational automation, intelligent cost optimization, and the underlying infrastructure to host emerging nonhuman AI agent workloads.

Market Overview

The desktop as a service market is moving beyond traditional virtual desktop delivery to incorporate artificial intelligence. What was once a purely infrastructure-focused technology is evolving into a highly intelligent platform driven by intense vendor investments in AI-native capabilities that introduce automation, self-healing environments and autonomous workspace operations. These advancements aim to improve the digital employee experience, with vendors increasingly utilizing predictive analytics and intelligent workload scaling to proactively resolve latency and optimize session performance before a user ever perceives an issue.

DaaS Use by AI Agents

DaaS is no longer strictly for human consumption; platforms are rapidly adapting their architectures to host emerging nonhuman, agentic AI workloads. Even as these platforms grow more sophisticated and autonomous, deployments are maintaining stringent enterprise controls. Vendors are introducing specialized, localized cloud architectures designed to guarantee rigorous compliance, zero-trust security and strict data sovereignty for highly regulated global workforces.

Cost Savings

Traditionally, cost savings when compared with physical PCs was not a driver for DaaS adoption, but this has changed. With cost as an adoption driver, enterprises focus acutely on DaaS vendors’ cost-optimization capabilities. Most vendors offer more basic scaling and power management, while some use AI technology to avoid over- and underspecifying virtual desktop configurations.

Continued DaaS Growth

Gartner forecasts that DaaS spending will grow from $4.9 billion in 2026 to $6.5 billion in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4%. 1 Growth is slowing, but stimulus from AI workloads could increase growth rates. The total cost of ownership for DaaS, especially when users couple it with thin-client endpoints, remains lower than that of a laptop PC for many use cases, though Gartner expects DaaS costs to rise as memory price increases begin to impact hosting charges. Enterprises continue to increase the mix of DaaS within their estates. This expansion is accelerated by the increased cost of PCs, which is driving organizations to extend the life span of existing devices by repurposing those using a secure operating system into DaaS thin clients. However, most are deploying DaaS for specific use cases, such as third-party access, rather than as a complete PC replacement.

Types of DaaS

The DaaS market has three distinct types of offerings, with vendors positioning their products in one or more of the three segments:

Next Steps

Heads of I&O should use our evaluation to understand the performance and strategic vision of DaaS vendors. Then, identify vendors that closely align with your organization’s short-term needs and longer-term strategy. Use the companion Critical Capabilities for Desktop as a Service to determine which products offer the specific capabilities that your organization needs.

Evidence

1 Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2024-2030, 1Q26