How a hosted desktop benefits your business

To understand what a hosted desktop is, let's first look at Software-as-a-Service or SaaS. Unlike a software program that’s installed on your laptop, an SaaS app is hosted on the cloud and delivered to your device over the internet. When you use an SaaS app, your device becomes an input interface and output display, but the processing and storing of data is done in the cloud.
 
Now, think of the apps and functionalities a computer has, but delivered to your device in one neat package over the cloud. This package is a hosted desktop, which is also referred to as Desktop-as-a-Service or DaaS.
 
There are many hosted desktop benefits for your business, namely increased manageability, mobility, security, and recoverability of IT resources provisioned to employees.

Increased manageability

Bring your own device policies introduce software incompatibility issues and cybersecurity vulnerabilities into your network if you permit staff members to use their own apps and operating systems. By provisioning standardized hosted desktops, you can mitigate compatibility issues and control what your network gets exposed to. You can also grant employees access to apps and functionalities based on their roles and responsibilities.
 
Furthermore, if you experience technical issues with your hosted desktops, you'll only have to contact a single provider. Even if your provider stitches together services from different IT suppliers, it'll be their responsibility to talk to those suppliers on your behalf.
 
Exemplary providers such as SimplyClouds can even serve businesses that utilize both in-house server-hosted apps and cloud-hosted apps. Thanks to its highly secure hybrid cloud, SimplyClouds' hosted desktops can grant users access to both types of apps with ease.

Increased mobility

Hosted desktops let people work from anywhere using practically any internet-connected device. This means that people can work from home, in their cubicles, or even at cafes or coworking spaces. Wherever a staff member chooses to work, they'll have access to the same remote desktop. This means that their user experience will be consistent, but may vary when the user utilizes different devices, given how a device such as a smartphone is used differently from a laptop.

Increased data security

Your cloud provider and IT team share data security responsibilities. The cloud provider ensures high levels of security for their hosted desktops by perpetually monitoring them, keeping their software up to date, and patching security gaps as soon as these are found.
 
On your end, your IT team can utilize data security tools, such as mobile device management and identity and access management, when provisioning hosted desktops. You can also implement custom security protocols and controls, such as disallowing users from locally storing company data. This way, your data remains safe in the cloud, regardless of whether a user's device breaks down, is lost, or is stolen.

Increased data recoverability

Since data storage for hosted desktops is in the cloud, data backups are performed regularly and automatically. This relieves you of the burden of having to manually back up data yourself. Additionally, the backups are done across multiple data centers. This means that even if a major natural disaster affects one data center, you’ll still have data in another data center to fall back on.
 
As you can see, hosted desktops are practical and beneficial for businesses that want to build mobile workforces and tap talent beyond their primary area of operations. Hosted desktops are easy to provision, manage, secure, and back up — given that you have a reliable partner like SimplyClouds. Talk to our IT experts today to learn more about leveraging hosted desktops for your business.