Cloud Computing Blog

Hosted Desktop explained

The Hosted Desktop is available in more variations than there are flavours of Ice Cream.

Delivery type

There are 3 different methods of delivery each with their own characteristics like bandwidth usage, security and look and feel. These are Microsoft Terminal Services, Citrix and VMWare Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).

Applications

Then we come to what applications are being delivered. The standard variant tends to come with Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange with either Outlook or Entourage for Mac users. Obviously the range of anti-virus and anti-spam also tend to vary based on the service provider. This would not be complete without the option of hosting your applications. We typically see a wide range of finance systems, bespoke applications and specific applications around a customer vertical market. Each of these applications is normally provided a virtual server which will be backed up, patched and managed by the service provider. Your custom application support is still provided much in the same way it would be now but service providers tend to offer remote access and a range of functions that enhance what is typical available to them.

Telephony

The telephony options are typically strong across the board providing the ability to have direct lines, voicemail, conference calling and of course the ability to port your existing numbers across. Premium options include Interactive Voice Response (IVR), integration with applications like Outlook and your CRM and video conferencing.

Support

The standard support is normally around office hours with 1 or 2 exceptions. This not only provides support to the company but support for each individual user. The platform is typically monitored 24/7 for major outages.

Data Centres

The offering normally starts at office based data centre right through to multiple commercial data centres geographically dispersed.