Hosted desktop solutions give you the ability to take your office anywhere. From airports to cafés, the sofa to the beach, a cloud-based desktop enables you to cut ties with office-based IT infrastructure, freeing you up for more consistent access and more flexible working.
Key takeaways
- Take your office anywhere: Work from anywhere, whether it’s a café, your living room, or a beach.
- Keep it secure without the stress: Your data and IT are in good hands, with built-in security and remote support.
- Save money, but still scale: Reduce hardware costs and easily scale your infrastructure as your business grows.
- Stay connected: Hosted desktops make collaboration simple, whether your team’s remote, hybrid, or in the office.
- Flexible and future-proof: Hosted desktops keep you ready for any changes in the way we work.
The changing landscape of the modern workplace
In the last 5 years, the modern workplace has transformed. Pre-pandemic, in 2019, about 12% of office workers were remote or hybrid workers, according to the ONS.
Post-pandemic, that number is closer to 40%. And, while COVID enforced home working for a while, these days ‘your office anywhere’ really does mean anywhere – a café, a library, a co-working space, or even a tropical island.
Technologies like hosted remote desktops have made hybrid and remote working not only possible, but easy – enabling secure access to your workspace from any device.
What Is a Hosted Desktop and How Does It Work?
A hosted desktop, sometimes called a virtual desktop, is a cloud-based solution that provides access to your files, applications and settings over the internet.
Traditionally, office workers have been tied to their machines. Everything they need to do their job is saved locally on their hard drive or on in-office servers, making it difficult to introduce the complete flexibility required for remote or hybrid working. It’s not easy to take your desktop PC to the local café, after all.
A hosted desktop releases you from this physical tie by hosting all your files, applications and settings on remote hosted servers, housed in a data centre, accessible via an internet connection.
There’s no difference in user experience – except that you can use it wherever you are. As long as you have an internet-connected device, you have a workspace – hence the phrase ‘having your office, anywhere’.
Key Benefits of Using a Hosted Desktop
Flexibility and Mobility
Office workers got a taste of flexibility during the pandemic, and most of them want to keep it. Hosted desktops unleash workers from their desks, enabling the flexibility and mobility that is both desired and required in the modern workplace. And since, according to Owl Labs’ State of Hybrid Working Report, 74% of UK workers still prefer hybrid work, forecasters at Market Research Future predict the virtual desktop market to grow to US$51.71 billion by 2032.
Cost Savings
By utilising remote servers, hosted desktops eliminate the need for businesses to own and maintain their own hardware – and the costs that go along with it. You can include in this both the cost of hardware and the cost of IT personnel to advise, maintain and support when new purchases are made or when repairs or
replacements are necessary.
In addition, the hosted desktop market follows the pay-as-you-go model, meaning you can scale capacity up or down as required. By contrast, if you were managing this in-house, increased capital expenditure could prove risky.
Security and Compliance
It may be that the idea of a remote desktop sounds less secure than conventional solutions. However, the opposite is true. Hosted desktops increase both security and compliance – making them particularly attractive to highly regulated industries.
For example, by storing data on centralised hosted servers – rather than across multiple individual devices – it is easier to protect and to enforce security protocols, such as multi-factor authentication.
These servers are also housed in a more secure setting and include built-in backup solutions and disaster recovery plans, in case of system failure. Other security measures, like end-to-end encryption, ensure data remains secure during transmission, while resource monitoring identifies threats quickly, reducing the risk of a data breach. Hosted desktops can also be configured to meet your industry’s security standards, such as GDPR, HIPAA or PCI-DSS.
Easy Collaboration
When you have some workers in the office (perhaps in multiple locations), some on the road, and some working remotely, it pays to have a system that allows seamless collaboration.
Hosted desktops enable you to easily share files, access applications and generally collaborate effectively wherever you are. And since we know workers value flexibility, giving them the tools to collaborate
anywhere means higher morale and reduced turnover – also key to improved productivity.
Improving Productivity by Hosting Your Office, Anywhere.
Access Anytime, Anywhere
It’s not just about working from home. For workers who spend a lot of time on the road, a hosted desktop enables them to connect with work in the usual way wherever they are, whenever they are logging on, and whichever device they are using.
No Need for On-Site IT
We’ve established that a hosted remote desktop removes the need for on-staff IT expertise, but an added benefit is the availability of remote IT support. No need to travel into the office to resolve a problem with your computer or wait for IT staff to arrive with you.
Software updates, maintenance and troubleshooting are all completed remotely, reducing downtime and frustration. Your service provider will also handle all software updates, ensuring your systems remain secure, stable and operational.
And as new technologies and solutions emerge, they’ll help you prepare to continue your digital transformation journey
How to Implement a Hosted Desktop Solution for Your
Business
Choosing the Right Provider
There are a lot of hosted remote desktop services out there and if you’re doing your research you’ll notice a lot of similarities among them. That can make it hard to decide which is the right provider for you, but there are three principal things to look at:
1. How reliable is this provider?
Reliability is measured as a percentage of uptime. You should look for a hosted desktop solution that guarantees 99.9% and is willing to back that up with a Service Level Agreement.
At Cloud2Me, our reliability is financially backed – meaning, we will pay our customers service credits up to 100% if we fall below 95% reliability. Fortunately, we’ve never fallen below our promise of 99.9%.
2. Is it secure
Security guarantees will vary depending on how and where the hosted desktop is hosted. Our hosted desktop connections are encrypted, and we encourage you to implement multi-factor authentication to improve security. We also use data centres with impressive security credentials to ensure the physical security and
safety of your data
3. Will they be easy to work with?
‘Easy to work with’ is a simplification but it covers all manner of eventualities. Do they have 24/7 IT support available? Are they able to scale with you? Do they understand your business, your pressures, and your language?
We’ve elected to specialise in delivering customised hosted servers and desktops for accountancy, for example, because we understand the business and we know the seasonal pressures accountants face. No one wants IT downtime in January.
To see whether your preferred provider will be easy to work with, you could seek honest feedback from their existing customers or ask about their customer retention rate.
Getting Started
Transitioning to a hosted desktop solution – called migration – is a carefully structured process that must be given due time and attention. (Read our more comprehensive guide to the migration process for more
information.) Getting this bit right saves a lot of pain later on!
Our process, honed over the course of hundreds of migrations, includes an initial audit to understand the existing environment and needs. Migration is just one part of a longer process that includes user account set-up, VPN configuration, printer and scanner integration, application installation including Microsoft Office products such as Azure etc. and extensive testing before go-live.
After go-live, we provide 24/7 multi-channel support until we’re confident everyone is happy, and of course that support continues throughout our relationship.
A Success Story From One of Our Hosted Desktop Customers
Recruitment specialist, Gilbert Meher came to us to resolve inconsistencies and inflexibilities across the business that were caused by the disparate nature of their existing IT infrastructure. As a growing business, they needed scalable solutions that supported their hybrid work model. They lacked IT support and were aware their in-house server was ageing and would soon become a liability. For all these reasons, they were seeking hosted IT services.
We proposed a customised hosted IT platform that would enable them to streamline collaboration, update security protocols and scale capacity. In the years since then, we’re proud to say that they have enjoyed 100% service uptime, with no security breaches.
Furthermore, the hosted platform is still working well, helping them through the COVID19 pandemic, but also helping their business scale with ease.
The Future of Flexible Work with Hosted Desktops
The benefits of flexible working are clear – but it only works if your remote working infrastructure is up to task. Creating ‘your office anywhere’ starts with seamless access to files and applications, anytime, anywhere.
Hosted desktops enable this access while also providing a seamless user
experience, with an interface that precisely mirrors that which you would
experience from your desk.
Going forward, both employees and customers will expect this flexibility. Migrating to a hosted desktop now will ensure you are ready to meet those expectations and deliver consistent, reliable service that gives your teams the ability to work equally effectively while away from their desks.
Still have questions? Give us a call. We’re always happy to talk through your options with no obligations.
