Depending on your setup, you may need the VMware Horizon Client or the Microsoft Remote Desktop app.
The transition to a virtual desktop model offers significant advantages for both IT departments and end-users: SIMATIC Virtualization as a Service - Siemens vdesktop siemens
Historically, Siemens also used the internal branding "Siemens VDI" for employee workstations, but in an industrial software context, it refers to running heavy 3D engineering applications remotely. Depending on your setup, you may need the
She was logged into , a virtual instance emulating a decommissioned Simatic S7-1500 controller. The real PLC had been scrapped three years ago, but its digital twin lived on, buried inside Siemens’ internal cloud — a ghost in the machine. The real PLC had been scrapped three years
The primary driver for Siemens' adoption of vDesktop is security. As a leading entity in critical infrastructure, industrial automation, and defense technology, Siemens is a high-value target for corporate espionage and cyberattacks. Traditional IT models, where sensitive data is stored locally on laptops, present significant risks; if a device is lost or stolen, proprietary data is compromised. With vDesktop, data never leaves the data center. The local device acts merely as a terminal displaying an image of the desktop. This "zero-trust" approach ensures that intellectual property—such as CAD designs for gas turbines or proprietary automation code—remains within the secure digital perimeter of Siemens, significantly reducing the attack surface.
Furthermore, for heavy CAD (Siemens NX) requires GPU-paravirtualization, which adds cost. Organizations must carefully profile their workloads to decide which users get a shared vDesktop versus a high-end dedicated virtual workstation.