The IT Nerd

Nexthink is warning that organizations risk wasting their technology investment and significant portions of their workforce’s time due to poor virtual desktop performance, with employees losing the equivalent of one full working day every week to sluggish virtual desktops.

Data from the Nexthink VDI Experience platform shows that employees see 20% of their working time impacted by sluggish virtual desktop performance. With the virtual client computing software market valued at $7.12bn in 2025, and VDI accounting for an estimated 59.74% of that spend – approximately $4.25bn – organizations are pouring billions into infrastructure that is undermining productivity.

The scale of the problem is significant. Nexthink data shows 65% of VDI users experience applications running slowly, while 51% of businesses using VDI experience performance issues. Based on Gartner’s forecast that virtual desktops will become the primary workspace for 20% of workers by 2027, and IDC projections putting the global knowledge worker and developer population will be at an estimated 1.04 billion by that year, this poor experience could affect approximately 135 million digital workers worldwide.

The five most common root causes of VDI-related support tickets identified by Nexthink include unstable or inconsistent network conditions, resource contention caused by image design, complicated or outdated login flows and scripts, underpowered or aging endpoint devices, and application behavior changes in virtual environments.

To improve VDI performance and protect the return on investment, organizations should:

• Build a rounded view of success. Moving beyond cost as the primary measure. Adopt XLA thinking that centers on user outcomes, such as what employees need from their virtual desktop environment and which moments in their working day matter most.
• Monitor experience, not just infrastructure. CPU, RAM, and uptime metrics do not reflect what users experience. Measure logon times, application launch times, and session responsiveness from the user’s perspective.
• Measure how users feel. Couple technical data with regular sentiment snapshots through surveys or focus groups. Ask pointed questions about whether employees feel productive in their VDI environment.
• Review findings and respond visibly. Establish a clear process for acting on experience data. Critically, close the loop with users, showing that their feedback has been heard and acted on is as important as the remediation itself.
• Work actively on improvements. Prioritize fixes based on what has the greatest user impact at the lowest effort and cost. Take incremental steps and measure each one, so teams can demonstrate progress and accelerate improvement over time.

Methodology

The full workforce calculations are as follows:

• Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service forecasts that by 2027, virtual desktops will be used as the primary workspace for 20% of workers. IDC projects the global knowledge worker and developer population will grow from 888 million in 2025 to 1.2 billion in 2029. This suggests an annual growth of approximately 78 million and would put the 2027 figure at around 1.04 billion. 
• Applying the 20% Gartner figure yields an estimated 208 million virtual desktop users by 2027. Of these, approximately 135 million could be affected by slow applications (using Nexthink’s 65% finding).

Nexthink has launched new research. Conducted by Havard Business Review Analytic Services in association with Nexthink, the findings show that four in ten (42%) say their organization’s existing data/technology infrastructure doesn’t support AI monitoring, which could present a big barrier to understanding how AI is being used across the workforce.

The Bridging the AI Acceleration Gap report is based on a global study of 259 respondents, all involved in their organization’s AI decisions, and finds little will change over the next 12 months. Only 19% of respondents say their organization will be implementing or enhancing visibility software during that period. Instead, the most common planned actions are AI education/training for employees (75%) and AI governance policies (67%).

That mismatch is already showing inside businesses. Over half (58%) agree that employees’ uptake of AI is outpacing their IT’s ability to monitor and govern use, while 45% agree that IT is being asked to govern AI without clear visibility into how it is actually being used.

The blind spot is biggest around informal AI use, where employees use AI tools at their own discretion for tasks, instead of the tools their employer has defined for specific business purposes. While 46% say their organization has sufficient visibility into its formal AI use, only 27% say the same for informal AI use among employees. Nearly two-thirds (63%) say visibility into their organization’s informal AI activity should be improved. Security and/or data exposure is the leading concern about employees adopting AI at their own discretion, named by 79%.

Download the full report, Bridging the AI Acceleration Gap, or to learn more about how DEX can help maximise AI investments, explore Nexthink’s cutting edge AI Drive solution.

Methodology

The Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey was conducted online between February and March 2026. It surveyed 259 members of the Harvard Business Review audience, all of whom are involved in their organization’s decisions about AI and all of whom work at organizations already using AI to some degree. Respondents represented organizations with 500 or more employees across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Questions on barriers to AI monitoring and on planned governance actions allowed respondents to select all applicable answers.

Nexthink has issued new analysis showing that employer support for AI is lagging real-world U.S. workforce adoption. Drawing on data from Gallup, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, JFF, and Forrester – combined with Nexthink usage data from millions of endpoints – the findings show AI adoption has become a game of chance, with employees left to navigate tools without support or guidance.

According to Gallup, 28% of U.S. employees now use AI at work at least a few times a week. Yet research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows just 15.9% of workers say their employer currently offers any AI training – a gap that makes clear employer support is failing to keep pace with AI usage. Nearly six in ten workers who consider AI training important are not being offered it, with the New York Fed finding demand for training (38%) more than double the share of employers providing it.

Despite this, JFF research shows 56% of workers have not been consulted by employers on how AI tools are used in their work. And when they seek guidance, workers turn to social media (31%), news articles (27%), or friends and family (21%) rather than employers (9%).

The scale of unsupported AI use is already visible. Nexthink data, drawn from 4.9 million sessions per day across 3.4 million employees, shows GenAI users engaging with these tools an average of 10 times a day and spending three hours and 14 minutes per week doing so. With adoption at this level occurring without formal guidance, the window for employers to get ahead of adoption is narrowing fast.

The challenge will only become more pronounced as AI becomes a larger part of everyday work. Forrester projects that AI will augment 20% of jobs over the next five years, raising the stakes for employers to understand not only whether AI tools are being used, but whether employees have the support, training and digital experience to use them effectively.

Nexthink, the global leader in Digital Employee Experience (DEX) management, today announces Mobile Experience, a natively-built solution that extends Nexthink’s comprehensive experience-level insights to Android and iOS devices.  

 With real-time mobile insights delivered directly to the Nexthink Infinity platform, IT teams can:

• Detect device performance degradation early: Monitor memory, storage, and deep battery health trends to identify devices at risk of failing before worker productivity is impacted  
• Understand the root cause of connectivity issues: Continuous Wi-Fi and cellular data network tracking allows IT to distinguish between user-side issues, such as poor signal due to the mobile device antenna, and infrastructure-side issues like weak Wi-Fi coverage in a facility. 
• Gain continuous visibility into compliance and security posture: Track outdated OS versions, missing patches, and encryption status while adding context from device performance and app connections to better assess risk. 

• Optimize hardware and battery refresh decisions: IT can move away from blanket refresh cycles by using a data-driven approach to determine which devices need a battery or full replacement and which can remain in use. 
• Improve visibility into app usage and risks: Gain insights into mobile app activity through network connection trends to better understand app adoption, engagement, AI app usage, and identify any non-compliant apps that could pose potential security risks

Android and iOS add to Nexthink’s growing list of supported technologies. Last year, Nexthink released VDI Experience, which offers enterprises full DEX capabilities for Citrix, Omnissa, AWS WorkSpaces, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Microsoft Windows 365 virtual environments. 

Learn more about Nexthink Mobile Experience or find out how Nexthink can take your IT operations to the next level.  

New research from Nexthink, the global leader in Digital Employee Experience (DEX) management, reveals that users^[1] of Generative AI (GenAI) tools save a net average of 3 hours and 47 minutes per week.^[2] However, the analysis finds that there are huge discrepancies between the four market-leading tools, with ChatGPT boosting productivity by more than double that of Copilot.

The analysis, based on 4.9m sessions per day across 3.4m employees, also finds users tend to engage with GenAI 10 times per day, for a total of three hours and fourteen minutes per week on average.^[4] However, there are significant numbers of users who are yet to engage with any of the Big Four tools.

While businesses have been quick to embrace GenAI, a lack of visibility around which tools are being used, by whom, and for what purposes, has been a significant problem in understanding the value they are getting from these investments. Nexthink AI Drive solves this problem by consolidating visibility, usage, guidance, and measurement data into a single vantage point. Combining this robust DEX data with user sentiment analysis, it uncovers employee pain points and adoption barriers, enabling organizations to provide better adoption support and employees to gain confidence faster.

To find out more about GenAI adoption or to discover how such tools are being used in your organization, please visit Nexthink’s AI Activation Playbook.

^[1] Employees who log in at least once a week to any GenAI tool

² Based on self-reporting from 5,000 end users between 30^th October – January 29^th of estimated time saved when using GenAI tools.

³ Overall averages reflect usage across all GenAI tools observed and are weighted by real-world usage levels (the four tools shown are the most used, but not used equally)

⁴ Data collected between 30^th October 2025 – 29^th January 2026 from Nexthink products AI Drive and AppEx. Data has been collected as a benchmark of tools across organizations. As such, in-house tools use has not been included in the analysis. All other product names, logos, brands, and other trademarks included in this release are the property of their respective trademark holders, and use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

 Nexthink today announced the launch of Nexthink Spark, the world’s first personal IT agent powered by real-time DEX data. 

Built on the Nexthink Infinity platform, Spark is a personalized, context-aware, fully autonomous AI agent that reaches employees and resolves IT issues before they impact work. Unlike traditional virtual agents that primarily route or log tickets, Spark is designed to fix issues at first contact. 

Already in use by more than 25 of Nexthink’s most DEX-mature customers, Nexthink Spark is fundamentally reforming IT support services. Traditional approaches to IT support have failed, with ticket volumes continuing to rise, employee satisfaction stalled, and costs mounting to around 4% of global IT spend. Consequently, businesses have had to choose between overstaffing IT service teams or accepting chronic employee frustration and decreased productivity. 

Nexthink Spark offers a third way forward. After a very broad early adopter program involving thousands of employees Spark achieved a 77% first contact resolution rate, more than five times the industry average of 15%. This was paired with a major reduction in lost productivity time, as Spark was able to autonomously resolved L1 issues in less than 2 minutes on average.

Key features of Nexthink Spark include: 

• Personalization: Leverages real-time endpoint telemetry to understand each employee’s digital journey, delivering the right resolutions through the right conversations at the right moment.
• Context-aware intelligence: Uses live signals from the Nexthink Infinity platform to understand issues as they occur and apply the most relevant remediation in real time.
• End-to-end automation: Executes fixes using native DEX remote actions and workflows, resolving issues autonomously without complex integrations or external orchestration.
• Governance and guardrails: Built with enterprise-grade controls that allow IT teams to define policies, approve actions, and continuously train models to adapt safely to the organization.

To learn more about Nexthink Spark and how it helps organizations reduce IT support costs while improving employee productivity, visit Spark | Nexthink.  

Nexthink has released ‘Cracking the DEX Equation: The Annual Workplace Productivity Report’ showing that poor DEX directly costs global businesses an average of 470,000 hours per year, equivalent to around 226 full-time employees. This indicates that digital friction is a vital and underreported element of the global productivity crisis.

Nexthink’s analysis – the first of its kind – is based on proprietary data from more than 20m endpoints across 474 global businesses. The report finds that the average employee suffers 14 negative digital experiences a week. These include device crashes, application glitches, or slow load times, and can reduce productivity and collaboration while also increasing employee frustration and stress. Crucially, the research also indicates a strong inverse correlation between an organization’s DEX score and productivity loss. For every 10-point increase to the overall DEX score, employees would recoup an average of 22 productive minutes each week. 

The research also suggests that these consistent disruptions are not just a threat to enterprise productivity, but also to the quality of work employees produce. The average negative event lasts a little under 3 minutes (167 seconds), yet research from the American Psychological Association suggests that even delays of less than 5 seconds are enough to triple people’s error rate. Moreover, research from the University of California has shown that when employees are taken out of their flow state it takes around 23 minutes for them to return, further increasing the amount of lost time.

Averaging lost time by industry shows significant variation with retailers, healthcare providers, and financial service companies suffering 1.7x the time loss of the tech industry. The number of disruptive events per week was almost identical, regardless of industry however, suggesting that the variance in time loss is down to the severity of events rather than the volume.

The figures in this report are derived from aggregated, anonymized telemetry from organizations largely in the early stages of DEX management.

For more information on the impact of DEX on workplace productivity, please read the full ‘Workplace Productivity’ report 

Nexthink is warning that the cost of custom Windows 10 support could reach upwards of $7.3bn based on market share data and business usage estimates.

Of the 1.4 billion devices powered by Windows, Nexthink estimates that approximately 30% are in use by commercial or public sector organizations, equating to around 420 million enterprise Windows devices. The latest market share data shows Windows 10 still has a 43% market share, which is equivalent to roughly 181 million devices.

According to Nexthink analysis of customer endpoints, there has been a 33% decrease in Windows 10 devices between 19^th May and 1^st August. Assuming a further 33% reduction by the 14^th October, that would leave around 121 million Windows 10 PCs. At $61 per device for the first year of custom support, organizations could collectively be facing a bill of just over $7.3 billion.

Nexthink’s analysis of the digital experience across Windows 10 and Windows 11 shows that Windows 11 devices are currently experiencing a higher level of instability, with more frequent system crashes (1.2% vs 0.6% for Windows 10) and hard resets (9.9% vs 8.5% for Windows 10). While not unexpected in the early years of a new operating system, the findings highlight how factors such as hardware compatibility, drivers and system configuration can impact the employee experience during an OS migration. These risks can be anticipated and mitigated with tailored library packs, which give IT teams ready-to-use insights and guidance to smooth the transition.

Organizations must take a proactive, data-led approach to migration planning, ensuring they understand both the technical requirements and potential impact on the employee experience. To do this, organizations should:

• Pinpoint remaining Windows 10 devices and assess hardware readiness for Windows 11.
• Plan for post-deadline risks, as unsupported devices face greater exposure to malware, phishing, and ransomware.
• Check application compatibility to prevent software issues or loss of support.
• Factor in device performance, as older hardware may slow productivity and limit upgrades.
• Consider IT resource impact, as unsupported OS devices may require more IT support.
• Avoid ‘AI FOMO’ by guiding employees on how they can access and use tools like Copilot, improved multitasking, and enhanced UI features.
• Reduce friction across teams by avoiding inconsistent experiences between Windows 10 and Windows 11 users.

Methodology

The full workings for the Nexthink calculation are as follows:

• There are 1.4 billion devices powered by Windows, of which Nexthink estimates that around 30% of these are in use by commercial or public sector organizations
• This leaves 420m million enterprise Windows devices. If 43% of these are Windows 10 devices, that leaves 180,600,000m Windows 10 enterprise devices
• Assuming a 33% reduction in the 74 days from 1^st August to 14^th October (59,598,000), this will leave 121,002,000 devices due to be upgraded
• At $61 per device, this makes the cost of Windows 10 custom support worldwide to be $7,381,122,000

Nexthink today announced new research exploring the challenges IT leaders face in preparing for the next wave of AI-driven digital transformation. Most IT leaders (92%) believe this new era of digital transformation will increase digital friction and less than half (47%) of employees have the requisite digital dexterity to adapt to technological changes. A further 88% expect workers to be daunted by new technologies such as Generative AI.

The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience report details the findings of a survey of 1,100 global IT decision makers, with 95% of IT leaders saying the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation will be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far. 

But with IT spend set to reach $5.61 trillion in 2025, and $644 billion on Generative AI alone, it is clear that solving digital friction and improving the employee experience must become a priority, or risk undermining the impact of investments. Yet despite this, 42% of IT leaders admit they struggle to put exact monetary value on AI investments, while 93% want to improve their ability to identify underperforming investments. 

The pace of change is relentless

IT leaders anticipate a 43% rise in the volume of applications being used over the next three years. In fact, 66% report that their organization rolls out a new application, tool, or platform every month. But this rapid expansion is stretching IT teams to breaking point, with 69% admitting there are too many users in the organization for IT to provide adequate adoption support for everyone. Without proper guidance, application rollouts suffer, leading to lower productivity (61%), reduced collaboration (51%), increased IT support tickets (46%), and higher employee dissatisfaction (46%).

To keep up with this accelerating change, IT leaders are clear on the need to improve digital dexterity across the workforce. 96% want to enhance their ability to accurately identify users’ digital friction, which would significantly strengthen digital transformation efforts. With AI reshaping the way people work, 96% say they need to enhance digital adoption support to help employees adapt to AI, with 95% highlighting that tailored digital employee experience (DEX) insights are more essential than ever. The impact of improving digital dexterity is clear: faster adoption of new tools (46%), higher productivity (38%), and enhanced innovation (37%).

To read the full report or to find out more about the new era of AI-powered digital transformation, click here.

By Tim Flower, DEX Evangelist at Nexthink

Software supply chain disruptions are the biggest danger to business resiliency today. One response: moving past the traditional ‘break/fix’ model of IT Services.

The last year has seen a spate of high-profile outages that have affected thousands of companies and millions of endpoints around the world. While the events have been different in many ways, there is one underlying commonality – in each case, the root of problem is one that doesn’t get much attention: The software supply chains – i.e. all the existing component parts that underpin new software products – that enterprises and suppliers around the world rely upon, and are largely outside the control of internal IT teams.

Software supply chains are the single biggest danger to business resiliency today, with the average enterprise using nearly 1000 different apps [1] and 96% of codebases [2] featuring open source code.

All of this means that there’s no such thing as an ‘isolated incident’ anymore. Even if companies take every reasonable precaution, there is no guarantee that a mistake three steps down the line won’t cause days of unexpected downtime and millions in lost revenue. Even an unknown compatibility issue can lead to significant headaches during a large-scale deployment. Not to mention the hurdles encountered when the supplier changes versions or discontinues support.   

When disaster strikes

The problem is, when – and it is when, not if – major third-party incidents occur, the vast majority of businesses lack the visibility and capabilities needed to swiftly identify and remediate such issues. This is because many IT service delivery teams are using legacy management platforms that don’t allow them to move beyond a traditional, reactionary model of handling tickets one by one when employees decide to call for help. The employees are essentially providing IT monitoring services. This creates multiple problems, including:

• In the middle of a costly and reputationally damaging crisis, IT teams end up wasting precious time trying to understand the scale of the problem before they can even start to look at how it can be fixed. Indeed, sometimes endpoints can remain out of action for days until an employee opens a ticket with the Help Desk.  
• A lack of visibility also means that it’s impossible for IT service teams to effectively prioritize their remediation efforts to, for example, get customer-facing services up and running first to minimize external disruption.  –
• Additionally, it hampers any attempts at communication to give colleagues and clients information about what has happened and when normal service is likely to resume. 

An evolving function

None of this is to say that IT service teams are redundant or unimportant – far from it. Even when things are going smoothly, strong service teams are worth their weight in gold, never mind when a crisis occurs. In fact, as software supply chains become ever more entangled, the need for skilled IT support experts is only going to grow.

The issue is that, all too often, businesses aren’t providing their IT support staff with the necessary capabilities to proactively identify, understand, and mitigate problems. For instance, in the event of a major third-party outage causing a cascade of endpoints experiencing the dreaded ‘Blue Screen of Death’ (BSOD), IT support teams need to be alerted to an unusual spike in system crashes in real-time, which ones are being affected, and insights about what the common root cause might be. 

Armed with this information, IT support can take immediate steps to address the problem – for example by halting any application updates on other endpoints – and reduce the number of those affected by BSOD. And as endpoints are remediated, a platform providing real time visibility can provide immediate status details on which systems still need attention and which ones are back up and running. 

Managing the shift effectively

The surge in third-party software issues is a key driver of the transition away from the traditional ‘break/fix’ model of IT Services and towards something more proactive, but it’s not the only motive. Factors such as a desire to improve regulatory compliance, greater demand for upskilling and training from support workers, and changing ways of working are all key reasons why the transition is gathering pace. There is also a growing awareness that the 40+ year practice of reactionary IT is no longer scalable, and actually poses a risk to business viability.  

Taken together, the increased relevance of these issues demonstrates that there is a huge opportunity for IT services to take a larger and more important role in achieving core business objectives, especially as modern IT environments become ever-more complex. IT needs to be a provider of business-enabling services, and no longer a team of expensive fire fighters.   

The next step is for senior leaders to champion this change by providing support staff with the necessary training and the ability to bring in new, modern capabilities that can transform IT Services from a short-term, reactionary function to one that is central to the operation and success of the entire enterprise.

Tim Flower is VP of DEX Strategy at Nexthink and the author of the Wiley book: DEX for Dummies, a Practical Guide for Organizing and Executing an Effective DEX Strategy in Any Organization. 

1 2024 Connectivity Benchmark Report: Insights from over 1000 IT Leaders

2 2024 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis Report