Coronavirus and remote work: Is your IT team ready?

Can your company support remote working for all employees? While many companies are asking that question as part of a wider digital initiative, it’s being accelerated in light of the current global health crisis caused by the outbreak of Coronavirus.

Coronavirus is causing companies to consider whether they can operate with large volumes of their workforce working from home in order to keep their staff safe, which may present a challenge for IT departments. With the majority of offices across the UK closed for the foreseeable future, Desktop as a Service presents a means of safeguarding productivity for office-based employees. In this guide/ blog, we look at how it can help.

Enabling remote work with desktop as a service

Many businesses are already taking a cloud-first approach to applications and a growing number are adopting desktop virtualisation using desktop as a service (DaaS). This gives employees a secure, consistent experience whether they are working in the office, at home or anywhere with a stable internet connection. For these companies, the challenge presented by Coronavirus means business as normal, albeit from home.

For companies without the tools in place to enable home working, fear not. Desktop as a Service can be implemented quickly to keep your business moving in the face of adversity. We’ve covered the benefits of DaaS in a previous blog, but if you’re looking for a fast to implement, scalable and CAPEX-light solution to deliver home working, Desktop as a Service can help. If you’re reading this and you’re looking to implement solutions quickly for your organisation, talk to us today and we can help you identify an approach and outline a project plan. However, if you’re just looking for information, the key benefits of DaaS include…

Access to the full suite of tools

Provide employees with full access to all their applications and data while working from home, delivered via a familiar Windows desktop experience.

Speed of deployment

Multi-tenanted DaaS platforms, like ours, are live right now, with new customers deployed in a couple of days. This drastically reduces the timescales when compared to standard cloud projects, and allows you to deliver home working initiatives against the clock.

Data security

Unlike using an RDP session through a VPN, there is no data security or compliance risk as there would be when an employee uses their own device. The desktop session is effectively happening in the cloud, no data is downloaded and stored on the users’ local machine. This ensures security and compliance remain a priority while allowing larger numbers of your workforce to work remotely at a greatly reduced cost to the company.

No strain on your VPN

If you were to run a VPN and have employees Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) into their internal desktop machine, then your network may be put under unprecedented pressure, even with a VPN concentrator. As DaaS accesses the data centre rather than the corporate network, there is no need to run a VPN, although it may be required for certain, on-prem hosted resources.

The process of delivering DaaS

Many businesses are considering how plausible it is to accelerate their path to DaaS, or are wondering what’s involved in getting a short-term solution in place in case offices are instructed to close. The answer, as is often the case in IT, is that it depends.

Getting desktops set up and ready to go on our platform is straightforward, and as our platform can be consumed on a per-user, per-month basis, it’s an ideal solution if you’re looking to get moving quickly. The big question you need to answer is… what do your employees need to do with their desktops?

For example, If you have a bunch of third-party suppliers who need to login and access files that currently live on servers in your office, a VPN tunnel is required.

Likewise, if your staff require on-prem, latency-sensitive resources, it makes sense to move those resources into the cloud so they are close to the virtual desktops, which is something we can help with.

Neither of these issues are big blockers, but it’s important to think about what your workforce needs and where things are currently hosted.

If you can get 60% of your workforce, those with simple requirements, online from home in the next few days and then begin working through the more specialist use cases, you’re moving in the right direction.

Desktop as a service from Cloudhelix

As our VDI platform is multi-tenanted and consumed on a per-user basis, there’s no delay in deploying service to your workforce as the solution is already available on our cloud platform. So employees using standard productivity applications can be deployed quickly. We can then discuss how and when we move line of business data and applications from on-premise into the cloud.

Our security-first approach overcomes the compliance risks associated with remote sessions. We are ISO 27001 accredited and our Cyber Essentials Plus status means that leading security policies and procedures are followed which are independently audited annually, giving you the peace of mind that we keep your data safe.

What’s more, our agile methodology allows us to rapidly deliver positive outcomes faster, so if you’re considering Desktop as a Service to meet the demands of Coronavirus, we should have a chat.

Regardless of the current situation facing the world, there will always be times when opening the office simply isn’t a viable option, which is where DaaS comes into its own. Our team are ready to talk you through the process of delivering a virtual desktop platform to continue thriving in uncertain times – call us on 01273 987920 or email sales@cloudhelix.io today.