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Using Hosted Desktops to Facilitate Home Working

One of the unexpected consequences, and some might say – silver linings – of the pandemic lock downs was the sudden shift to home working.  More interestingly is that even though lock downs are a thing of the past, working from home is here to stay.   In my line of work, I talk to a lot of business owners looking for cloud-based solutions to help their staff work remotely, and many are wondering why they are paying thousands of pounds for office space when they can continue to embrace working from home.

“Hosted Desktops have revolutionised home working”

Having the right tools for employees to work efficiently and productively is essential. One such innovation that has revolutionised remote working is Hosted Desktops.  Hosted Desktops, often called Desktop as a Service, are a cloud computing innovation that enables staff to work on business applications regardless of their location.

The hosted desktops give people the ability to work from anywhere over an internet connection, and not only that, they are not restricted to Windows personal computers but can be run on Apple Macs, Google Chromebooks, even iOS and Android tablets and phones.

Why do I need a Hosted Desktop?

Although a lot of applications can run in web browsers using cloud-based Software as a Service, there are many business software applications that need to run on a Windows desktop computer and frequently share a central database or files and documents. These applications are much harder to access by people working from home when they are running from an office-based server. I’ve spoken to a few companies where the remote workers are connecting to their office based work PCs using Team Viewer or similar in order to run their applications.  Not only is this generally quite slow, it is also a waste of resources having two computers running for every user.

This problem is completely solved by hosted desktop solutions. The application, it’s database and any associated documents or files, are moved to a hosted desktop platform.  Everyone, whether remote working or office based can then connect to their hosted desktop to run the application.

 

Can hosted desktops help cyber security?

All businesses need to take digital security very seriously and hosted desktops give business owners some additional tools in their cyber security armoury.

As all the applications are running on the remote hosted desktop, nothing runs on the user’s local PC.   This reduces the concerns business owners may have about who else uses that home PC and whether it is up to date with Windows patches and antivirus software.

Hosted Desktop providers will also look after the day to day maintenance of the server everything is running on.  This will include full backups of all your data as well as keeping the server up to date with the latest security patches and antivirus.

The hosted desktop server will be running inside a commercial data centre with a whole host of security, high availability/business continuity, and disaster recovery features.

 

Can hosted desktops improve productivity?

Having the same working environment and user experience where ever you go definitely increases productivity, especially if you run all your business applications on the hosted desktop. You could be running your Line of Business application alongside Microsoft Office and Microsoft Teams plus any browser-based apps, all on your hosted desktop.  So, no matter where you connect from, your user experience, applications and data, browser favourites and shortcuts will always be there at your fingertips, just as you last left them.

Do I need IT skills or the support of an IT specialist to use Hosted Desktops?

Hosted Desktops are designed so that business of any size can enable their employees to work on their business applications without the need for any IT skills or having to pay a third party IT support company. The hosted desktop provider will generally install everything and move your data to the platform.  They can even connect to user’s personal computers (with permission) to help set things up.

 

How do I find out more?

To find out more about using hosted desktops to facilitate home working, get in touch today using the form below or visit our contact page to speak to one of our friendly sales consultants who can discuss your business requirements and help architect the right hosted desktop solution to help your staff to work from home.

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