Hosted Desktop may sound complicated but, in reality, it’s a relatively straightforward solution that has been tried and tested for many years and has now become even better with the continued development of Microsoft Azure.
The COVID pandemic forced many businesses to change their approach to agile working, especially during the enforced locks down we saw in 2020 and 2021.
Working From Home quickly became the norm and businesses that already had the ability to allow users to work via a Hosted Desktop solution saw minimum disruption and productivity that matched working from ‘the office’. In fact, in some cases, productivity rose due to the greater work-life balance this solution can deliver.
Adding to this, it highlighted to businesses the level of experience presented by their Managed IT Service Provider, who also had to endure lockdown.
The sudden need for businesses to quickly move employees to remote working clearly put pressure on such service providers, who previously only had to deal with a few people working in this way – and certainly not an entire business for long periods of time. Some excelled in supporting their clients, whilst others buckled under the pressure of this new norm.
So what exactly is a Hosted Desktop Solution?
Imagine you have a computer, connected to a server that floating above you all the time. You can simply reach up, log in, and all your data, programmes and communications are there. It looks exactly like your local computer desktop (Windows) and provided you have an internet connection (cable, wifi, mobile data) you can access it.
What are the benefits of Hosted Desktop?
Cost
Hosted Desktop, particularly with Microsoft Azure is different to the conventional approach. You don’t have the capital expense of servers that sit in air-conditioned server rooms, requiring constant maintenance and patching.
Hosted Desktop is a subscription-based service with the cost being only the resource you require to run your businesses. This would include things like storage, server specifications (RAM, processors etc), end-user support etc. This means you can budget month on month knowing more or less exactly what your IT spend will be.
Scalability
Alongside the benefits of being able to accurately budget your IT spend, a Hosted Desktop solution enables your business to scale your infrastructure up or down. If, for example, you experience rapid growth and need to factor in a number of new end users, additional server resource can be added into the mix at a moment’s notice. Coupled with Office 365 subscriptions and all the productivity and communications applications you may well be using, a Hosted Desktop is the perfect mix of scalability for growth.
Agile Working
Probably the biggest benefit is the ability to literally be able to work from anywhere, anytime (with an internet connection). COVID saw the biggest upheaval of the work from home culture since home working was ‘a thing’.
Businesses that already operated a Hosted Desktop environment adapted easily whilst others found life a lot harder. To simply start working in the office and be able to continue at home allows greater flexibility and work life balance.
Disaster Recovery
Having your servers hosted means the recovery of systems in the event of a disaster, be it location or cyber orientated, can be accomplished in a fraction of the time it would take were you to restore local based equipment. Hosted Desktop allows for multiple replications of servers in different locations and can be restored easily should the need arise.
Lessen your security risks
Hosted Desktop, despite being accessed via the internet, is incredibly secure. Your data is housed within secure locations around the UK, eliminating those “files’ that happen to be on a users laptop. Add a Virtual Private Network and Multi-Factor Authentication into the mix, maybe include a Geo-location restriction on logins, and you have an incredibly secure environment.
Efficient Managed Support
With a Hosted Desktop, your infrastructure can be monitored centrally by our support team. This means we can be proactive with the mundane maintenance issues such as patching and updates. Your environment is at our fingertips, where we are poised to help and support you and your end users dynamically and quickly.
Are you ready to switch to a Hosted Desktop Environment?
Techn22 are experts in migrating systems across to a Hosted Desktop environment. It really is much more straightforward, efficient and time effective than you may think.
If you want to have a chat through the advantages of a Hosted Desktop solution and how it can help your business achieve greater agility, give Dave West a call or drop us an email.
