Use Cases
VDI Replacement: Keep the isolation without the latency
Reduce or eliminate your VDI footprint with Blue Border. The secure workspace that protects company data, applications, and AI workflows on any computer – without hosting the desktop or fully managing the endpoint.
Trusted by 700+ security- and compliance-driven organizations, including Fidelity, Guardian, StoneX, Whatnot, and the IMF.
The cost, complexity, and user friction of VDI have reached a breaking point
Virtual desktops were once the standard way to secure remote work. Host the desktop in the cloud so company data never lands on the endpoint. For a long time it was the only way to get real isolation on devices IT didn’t control. Over time, the drawbacks of VDI are piling up.
VDI’s fundamental tradeoff is security at the cost of user experience. Every virtual desktop introduces latency, lag, and friction. That friction compounds for video calls, AI tools, data-heavy applications, and anything that demands a fast, responsive interface.
Blue Border keeps all applications local, running at full native speed on the user’s own hardware. There is no remote desktop, no application hosting, and no backend infrastructure. Work feels like work — not like fighting a slow connection. That difference matters for productivity, adoption, and employee satisfaction.
A whole VDI stack to host and maintain
Brokers, gateways, storage, compute, and licensing. Plus capacity planning, patching, and monitoring. Nevermind the extra help desk tickets.
Latency users feel every day
Hosting a desktop adds lag to calls, wait time to logins and a connection that struggles over distances and variable networks.
Costs that scales over time
Per-seat licensing plus hosting, compute, and support grow with the workforce, so the bill climbs with every user and every peak — with no end to the spend.
VDI vs. Blue Border™
There’s a way to replace VDI partially or outright: with Blue Border, work applications run locally inside a company-controlled secure enclave on the device itself — no hosting or virtualization. You eliminate the expensive backend infrastructure and latency while keeping the data isolation.
| VDI / Virtual Desktops |
|
|
|---|---|---|
Where work runs
VDI / Virtual Desktops
A desktop or apps hosted from a data center or cloud – nothing runs on the device.
Venn Blue Border
Work applications run locally on the device, inside a company-controlled secure enclave.
|
A desktop or apps hosted from a data center or cloud – nothing runs on the device. | Work applications run locally on the device, inside a company-controlled secure enclave. |
App performance
VDI / Virtual Desktops
Hosting adds latency and lag to everything the user does.
Venn Blue Border
Native app performance. No remote desktop between the user and accomplishing their work.
|
Hosting adds latency and lag to everything the user does. | Native app performance. No remote desktop between the user and accomplishing their work. |
Backend / infrastructure
VDI / Virtual Desktops
Brokers, gateways, storage, and compute to stand up.
Venn Blue Border
None. Blue Border is a single lightweight software install, no backend at all.
|
Brokers, gateways, storage, and compute to stand up. | None. Blue Border is a single lightweight software install, no backend at all. |
Maintenance
VDI / Virtual Desktops
Capacity planning, patching, monitoring, and scaling, ongoing.
Venn Blue Border
No backend to maintain, patch, or capacity-plan.
|
Capacity planning, patching, monitoring, and scaling, ongoing. | No backend to maintain, patch, or capacity-plan. |
Latency
VDI / Virtual Desktops
Inevitable with hosting. Completely unavoidable and worst over distance.
Venn Blue Border
None. Apps run locally on the device at 100% performance.
|
Inevitable with hosting. Completely unavoidable and worst over distance. | None. Apps run locally on the device at 100% performance. |
Cost model
VDI / Virtual Desktops
Per-seat licensing plus hosting, compute, and support that scale with every seat.
Venn Blue Border
No VDI infrastructure or no hardware to ship. Save up to 60% vs. VDI.
|
Per-seat licensing plus hosting, compute, and support that scale with every seat. | No VDI infrastructure or no hardware to ship. Save up to 60% vs. VDI. |
Deployment
VDI / Virtual Desktops
Stand up sessions, profiles, and images before users can work.
Venn Blue Border
Install on an existing device and productive in minutes.
|
Stand up sessions, profiles, and images before users can work. | Install on an existing device and productive in minutes. |
Device & ownership
VDI / Virtual Desktops
Either a BYOD or managed device.
Venn Blue Border
Any device, managed or unmanaged, Mac or Windows — company-issued, third-party, or personal.
|
Either a BYOD or managed device. | Any device, managed or unmanaged, Mac or Windows — company-issued, third-party, or personal. |
Data isolation / security
VDI / Virtual Desktops
Company data stays in the hosted session.
Venn Blue Border
Company data is encrypted and isolated inside the secure enclave — the same isolation as VDI without the hosted session.
|
Company data stays in the hosted session. | Company data is encrypted and isolated inside the secure enclave — the same isolation as VDI without the hosted session. |
DLP / AI governance
VDI / Virtual Desktops
Controls apply inside the hosted session only.
Venn Blue Border
DLP across copy/paste, download, upload, screenshot, print, and AI, plus AI governance, in the enclave.
|
Controls apply inside the hosted session only. | DLP across copy/paste, download, upload, screenshot, print, and AI, plus AI governance, in the enclave. |
How Blue Border™ Works
Installing Blue Border on a Mac or PC creates a company-controlled secure enclave directly on the device — work data, apps, networking, and AI all run locally inside it.
- Network. Work traffic routes through Venn’s built-in VPN gateway — or your existing private network.
- Applications. Every app — installed, browser-based or AI — is wrapped by a blue line, creating a virtual firewall and enforcing DLP at the app level.
- Files. Users save only to work-sanctioned file systems inside Venn Disk that are isolated, encrypted and remote wipeable.
All activity outside Blue Border™ stays 100% private.
Any worker. Any device. Any application. Any AI workflow.
Eliminate the VDI stack partially or entirely
Eliminate the headache. Blue Border customers save up to 60% vs. VDI by eliminating the expensive infrastructure and company-managed laptops that frequently come with VDI. Blue Border delivers 100% native local performance and no back-end infrastructure – the modern VDI replacement.
Native app performance with no latency
Because applications run locally rather than hosted from a data center, there is no session in the middle and no lag. Video calls, data-heavy desktop apps, and AI tools run at full native speed on the user’s own device. Even over the distances and networks that made VDI feel slow.
No backend to host or maintain
VDI is an ongoing operations program while Blue Border is a lightweight software deployment. There is nothing to patch or monitor on the back end, so IT gets back the time and budget that virtual-desktop infrastructure consumed.
Keep the data isolation you switched to VDI for
Replacing VDI doesn’t mean giving up security. With Blue Border, company data is encrypted and isolated inside the enclave, access is governed by IT, and DLP is enforced across every work app — on any device, managed or unmanaged. You keep the isolation that justified VDI, and add native performance and device flexibility on top.
Frequently Asked Questions
Instead of hosting a desktop from a data center, Blue Border installs a company-controlled secure enclave on each device, and work applications run locally inside it. Company data stays encrypted and isolated, access is governed, and DLP is enforced — so you get VDI’s data isolation, but with native app performance and no backend to host.
No. Blue Border is a single lightweight software install with no infrastructure to stand up. There is nothing on the back end to maintain or patch — the VDI infrastructure is eliminated, not replaced with more of it.
Yes. VDI hosts a desktop over a network, which adds latency to everything; Blue Border runs applications locally on the device, so there is no session in the middle. Users get full native performance — noticeably better on video calls, data-heavy apps, and over long or variable network distances.
No. Company data is encrypted and isolated inside the secure enclave, access is governed by IT, and DLP is enforced across every work app, on any device. You keep the isolation that justified VDI — you just get it locally, without the backend or the latency.
Organizations save up to 60% vs. VDI by eliminating per-seat virtual-desktop licensing, hosting, compute, and ongoing maintenance — and by using the devices workers already have instead of provisioned endpoints. The infrastructure cost doesn’t just shrink; it goes away.
There is no backend to build, so migration isn’t a re-platforming project. Blue Border installs on the devices people already have in minutes, so most teams move users off VDI in waves and decommission the infrastructure as they go, on their own timeline.
Retire the VDI stack for good
Blue Border is the secure workspace for remote employees and contractors on any device — without VDI or fully managing the endpoint. Replace virtual desktops with a local secure enclave: eliminate the backend, end the latency, and keep the data isolation — on any device, at a fraction of the cost.