MARKET REPORT MSP
“People want to be able to work anywhere, at any time, on any device. Obviously, businesses want
that to be secure and efficient at the same time.” Neil Lathwood, UKFast - CTO
Delivering the Desktop –
An MSP Opportunity
Desktop as a Service (DaaS) could become the new normal for organisations seeking to simplify the provision
and maintenance of their PC estate. At the same time DaaS is looking like a great and growing application
opportunity for managed service providers
Desktop as a Service (DaaS)
DaaS, like any Cloud
based service is about how
you do computing and
not where you do computing.
Remember the days of
trying to keep all your o ce
PC licenses up to date?
What a nightmare it was for
organisations of any size to
remain honest – let alone have
everyone on the same versions
of operating systems and
business applications.
If ever an application did
not have to look far for a
problem, then DaaS was never
going to be in need of a trip to
Specsavers.
In recent times DaaS has
been a market in blossom and
to some extent riding the wave
of applications that were already
on their way to the cloud, but
it became more serious along
journey with big players such as
Amazon, VMware, Google and
Microsoft et al all wanting a
share of the action.
Likewise, DaaS just seems a
perfect t for Managed Services
Suppliers (MSPs) and for many
the supply and management
of user desktops is just another
application in their portfolio.
Speaking to UKFast’s CTO
Neil Lathwood, we asked what
are the key elements required
to deliver a secure, scalable,
high-performance desktop
environment?
“People want to be able to
work anywhere, at any time,
on any device. Obviously,
businesses want that to be
secure and e cient at the same
time.
On the security side,
it’s important to consider
both software security and
encryption, and the physical
security that comes with
hosting the solution in an
accredited data centre.
For FASTdesk, the security
management is a big sell,
because we handle that end-toend
for our clients.
Businesses don’t have to
worry about where their data
is in terms of endpoints like
laptops and other devices,
and things getting lost or
stolen. When the data is stored
centrally in a secure DC the
loss of a work device turns from
a potential GDPR catastrophe
into a minor inconvenience.
Customers want us to
support their applications
without any additional hassle.
Many businesses have legacy
applications that traditionally
were di cult to put up in the
cloud, but we work closely
with our customers to make
whatever application they may
need available remotely via the
FASTdesk network.
For start-ups and small
businesses there’s a signi cant
cost to launching IT. ere’s
the cost of your local kit plus
ongoing running costs, and
then you need to employ
someone to manage that,
and you might not have that
expertise in a small team. At
that point it makes perfect sense
to o oad all of that to someone
else to manage it all for you at a
xed cost per user per month.
When businesses want to
scale users they can do so on
a predictable, sliding scale.
ey don’t need to worry about
reaching a tipping point with
capacity on their server or in
their server room or managing
increased user numbers. We
take all that out of their hands,
and nowadays most businesses
are very happy with that.”
Commenting on the view
that hourly usage rates from
Amazon for their Windows
or Linux desktop Workspaces
are the ultimate in exibility,
Lathwood says, ‘It is great
in terms of exibility but
there’s still a base level of
knowledge needed to be able to
run it’.
“Access to a support team
is one of the things people
like about FASTdesk, because
it takes away that need for
specialist knowledge. It’s very
hard to justify outsourcing your
IT if you still need the same
number of senior IT sta to run
the platform.
With AWS and Azure it’s
di cult to do a cost analysis
against replacing your internal
resource, because you just don’t
know. It could be cheaper one
month and more expensive the
next, so your nance team will
not thank you. >
UKFast CTO
Neil Lathwood
34 | Comms Business Magazine | September 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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