ControlUp launches DaaS IQ for Azure Virtual Desktop

ControlUp has launched DaaS IQ for Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop environments, aimed at organisations managing Desktop-as-a-Service deployments at scale.

The software is designed to give IT teams a single platform for lifecycle management, cost control and operational oversight across Azure Virtual Desktop, or AVD. It is available as a standalone offering.

Businesses have expanded their use of cloud-hosted desktops as they shift staff to more flexible working arrangements and seek to avoid running more infrastructure in-house. That shift has also created new management challenges, particularly for IT departments trying to control usage, maintain availability and avoid paying for unused cloud resources.

Many teams still rely on a mix of the Azure Portal, Intune and custom scripts to manage AVD estates, resulting in a fragmented operating model in which autoscaling, image updates and access controls are spread across several systems rather than managed from one place.

Core Functions

DaaS IQ combines several functions that are often managed separately, including schedule-based and policy-driven autoscaling; a dashboard for utilisation, health and cost data; host lifecycle controls such as drain, restart and delete actions; image management for golden images; and audit tracking across the environment.

The system is intended to match compute capacity more closely to real-time demand, reducing idle resources outside busy periods while maintaining enough capacity when user demand rises.

It also allows IT teams to define reusable controls that can be applied across multiple host pools, rather than setting rules individually or maintaining scripts. For organisations with large estates, that could reduce repetitive administration and lower the risk of configuration drift.

Cost Pressure

Spending discipline has become a central issue for companies running cloud desktop environments. AVD can reduce the need for on-premise hardware, but usage patterns can be uneven, and poorly tuned deployments may leave virtual machines running longer than necessary.

DaaS IQ includes built-in cost visibility intended to help IT and FinOps teams identify where resources are in use and where waste may be reduced. The aim is to make cloud spending more predictable in environments where demand can change quickly over the course of a day or week.

ControlUp also presents the product as a way to improve consistency for end users. According to the company, the software includes built-in buffers, smart policies and real-time visibility so IT teams can act before capacity shortfalls affect performance.

This matters for organisations that depend on virtual desktops for frontline operations, outsourced teams or remote employees. Delays in login times, poor session performance or unavailable capacity can affect productivity and service delivery, even when infrastructure costs are under control.

MSP Market

The product also supports multi-tenant environments used by managed service providers. In these settings, providers often need to standardise operational processes across several customer estates while keeping access rights separate and maintaining oversight from a central interface.

DaaS IQ offers granular delegation controls for that model, which could appeal to providers that want to manage multiple AVD environments without relying on separate toolsets for each customer.

"Other tools give IT teams better controls to manage AVD-we're removing the need to manage it at all," said Gadi Feldman, chief product officer at ControlUp.

"DaaS IQ combines intelligent automation and AI to create an environment that scales, spends efficiently and heals itself continuously, without requiring constant monitoring. That intelligence is built on the most complete IT management platform on the market, bringing together proactive monitoring, anomaly detection, synthetic testing, remote management, powerful automation and an AI assistant. We're the only vendor that can manage the full AVD stack and say with certainty that every user is getting the experience they deserve. Nothing else comes close," Feldman said.