This Develop3D article looks at how London-based Creative ITC is reshaping workstations for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) practices with a hybrid computing approach that mixes virtual and dedicated remote desktops. The company has deep roots in the AEC sector, drawing on the founders’ experience at global engineering consultancy Arup to build solutions that address real workflow pressures rather than generic IT talk. Over the past year and a half, Creative ITC has strengthened its desktop-as-a-service offer in response to evolving demands from firms with heavy BIM, CAD, and visualization workloads.
Central to this hybrid strategy are two platforms. The first is its VDIPod virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), which delivers GPU-accelerated remote machines from data centers such as Equinix for highly visual tasks. The second, introduced in autumn 2025, is VCDPod, a pool of dedicated one-to-one remote workstations designed for demanding single-threaded applications and workflows where pure VDI performance isn’t enough. Both platforms are delivered through a consistent user portal, letting organizations assign the right kind of compute to each user with minimal disruption.
Creative ITC’s approach recognizes that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Some firms can rely almost entirely on virtualized workstations, while others need a mix of virtual and dedicated capacity depending on project peaks, geography, and application demands, for example, heavy visualization sessions versus everyday CAD work. The company’s hybrid strategy aims to strike a balance between cost, performance, and global access, without forcing a hard choice between the two paradigms.
By unifying virtual and physical remote desktops within the same service, Creative ITC is addressing common barriers in distributed AEC workflows and enabling flexible adoption of workstation technology at scale. This model could influence how other IT providers think about supporting complex design workloads beyond traditional on-premise hardware or purely cloud-based virtualization.