Hosted Workspace: A cost effective alternative.
If you’re one of the many organisations around the UK that rely on legacy applications to manage their everyday business operations, you may be disappointed that they’re not compliant with Microsoft 365.
Since legacy systems have been designed to run in a conventional “server-based computing” model, they don’t operate in a cloud-based Microsoft 365 environment – the only alternative is to have them installed on a server to then be distributed to individual machines in your network. This can be a barrier to adoption of far more advanced cloud services.
We have discussed in our blog the benefits of Microsoft’s new Windows Virtual Desktop, which was created by Microsoft to address the very problem of backwards compatibility for legacy apps. However, not all types of organisations will find Windows Virtual Desktop a perfect fit. Microsoft charges users of WVD for the minutes in which they are using the platform. Therefore, if you are an organisation which has employees working outside of ‘traditional’ office hours more often than not, you could be stung by usage charges. Secondly, if you are a large organisation with many many users, you may find better value from a privately hosted solution, as the costs can be spread over a larger user base.
If this these points sound familiar, don’t panic… we have a brilliant alternative: Hosted Workspace.
Hosted Workspace is a service that Serval IT Systems can provide to you through their partnership with the entrust IT Group.
The difference between a Hosted Workspace and WVD is that, rather than being hosted in Microsoft’s Azure Cloud platform, a Hosted Workspace is privately owned and managed. We will use our own private servers in our data centres to deliver Hosted Workspace to you, giving you more control over the components that go into building your IT environment.
Moreover, Hosted Workspace uses a different pricing structure to WVD. Rather than charging individuals by their usage statistics, we charge based on the number of users and storage amounts, on a month-to-month basis. As a result, your employees are able to access their workspace anywhere, at any time, on virtually any device, without your business incurring any unnecessary charges that come from working outside traditional office hours. This is ideal for flexible teams that work at different times of day, or for remote teams who have to travel overseas and to different timezones.
If you are already a Microsoft 365 user, then will not be restricted to WVD either. The Serval Hosted Workspace environment is now built to be Microsoft 365 friendly, meaning you can couple your Microsoft 365 licences with the Hosted Workspace, which offsets prices in the desktop and gives you a favourable rate.
If you are looking for a desktop environment to host your legacy applications and Windows Virtual Desktop is not the right fit for your business, then Hosted Workspace will be for you. The Serval IT Systems team will work closely with you to ensure that all key components you need are included within your workspace, for the right price. If you choose our Hosted Workspace, users will also have complete access to our UK based service team.
Please get in touch for more information.