1. Among the CIOs surveyed, 72 percent agreed or strongly agreed that their business executives see cloud as a way to be independent of IT.
2. Approximately 58 percent of respondents are running mission-critical workloads in the unmanaged public cloud regardless of policy, while only 36 percent have policies allowing this. Furthermore, respondents indicated that public clouds acquired by teams outside of IT are a top driver of complexity and risk.

So, what is happening here? Clearly the IT teams for these companies are professional, dedicated and committed to delivery but the business units themselves have no qualms about bypassing them completely to achieve a short-term business goal.

The reality is that organisations of all sizes are being forced to change far more quickly than in the past and they simply cannot wait for IT to deliver on the “grand strategy”. IT Directors and CIOs will need to embrace external cloud services and bring them into their IT plans if they want to stay relevant to their organisations.

More and more business leaders are turning to cloud solutions like Hosted Desktops to deliver their IT requirements quickly and flexibly – with an entirely predictable cost.

• Group revenues increased by 23%
• Year on year net profit improvement of £100k
• Hosted Desktop user count increased by 41%
• Successful opening of a US sales office in Boston,MA

Jeff Dodd, Group CEO commented :

“The growing maturity of the hosted desktop market means that for the first time in our history, customers are seeking out our services and understand many of the costs & benefits in advance. That is reflected in a significant upturn in new business sales and profitability. In addition, many of our customers show growth in staff numbers, suggesting that the economic situation is better than it is portrayed in the press.

This has been a very pleasing financial year and we are well placed to expand further in 2012-13.”

The terms of service of Google’s new cloud service “Drive” could allow US law enforcement agencies to access your data, without your knowledge and without the need for a warrant.

Or at least, that’s what TrendMicro cloud evangelist, David Asprey believes. According to Mr Asprey the terms of use of Google Drive “destroy any expectation of privacy because … you give Google full right to do whatever they want to do with your data and of course one of those things is to give your information to law enforcement without a subpoena.”

By signing up to Google Drive, users give the tech giant a global license to “use, host, store, reproduce, modify or create derivative works and to publish, publicly perform and distribute that content.”

Simply put, anything they store, they have full rights to, that’s a world away from our Hosted Desktop service where your data is always yours.

24×7 support continues to be provided for “infrastructure” issues that prevent access to the Hosted Desktop service, however, this will be via our call centre who will log issues with the engineering team in the background.

The extended hours are the result of feedback from our customer base, many of whom work extended hours at their office, at home or on the move.

Ryan & Liam will strengthen the existing team and will spend the next year training to be Microsoft experts whilst working with entrust customers & staff to deliver new services. Further additions to the team are expected later in the year, ensuring that the support team can keep up with the growth of the customer base.

Co-ordinated with the release of version 3.1 of the Hosted Desktop service, the new portal boasts a number of usability improvements and will streamline the process of connecting to the many entrust cloud services.

The portal will also be available to iPad users after installation of the Citrix Receiver application in the iTunes App Store.

The latest enhancements in the Mobility Pack include a complete SDK for customising specific apps for mobility, and these customisations can even allow hosted apps to interact seamlessly with GPS, camera, or SMS.

The benefits of the mobility pack will be introduced into the entrust Hosted Desktop product set, starting with version 3.1 of our Hosted Desktop – due in May 2012.

]]> http://www.onlinedesktop.com/tablets-gain-usability-with-online-desktop-v3-1/feed/ 0 http://www.onlinedesktop.com/licensing-office-on-an-ipad-or-android-tablet/ http://www.onlinedesktop.com/licensing-office-on-an-ipad-or-android-tablet/#comments Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:11:12 +0000 entrustit http://www.onlinedesktop.com/?p=268 Continue reading →]]> There’s been some speculation recently about whether it’s possible to deliver a Windows7/Office 2010 experience on tablets and still remain properly licensed. The main reason for the speculation has been the launch of the Onlive Desktop (note the spelling!) which seemed to provide exactly that, at no cost.

Microsoft have been strangely quiet on the subject until recently when in a blog post yesterday Joe Matz (VP of Worldwide Licensing) expressed openly what we had suspected for several months :

“We are actively engaged with OnLive with the hope of bringing them into a properly licensed scenario, and we are committed to seeing this issue is resolved.“

The same blogpost made it clear that there is only one way to deliver Office on mobile devices that are running an underlying OS other than Windows :

“Office may only be provided as a service if it is hosted on Windows Server and Remote Desktop Services“

So that’s it. Hosted Desktop providers can provide you with access to Windows & Office on your mobile device but we all use the legal licensing model that MS describe above. Hosted Desktop providers (like us) declare your license use monthly to MS and pay them a fee which is why commercial hosted desktop systems are not free. 

So, if you want commercially delivered, properly licensed, Microsoft Windows and Office on your tablet (of any type) then you need http://www.onlinedesktop.com not www.onlive.com.

 ‘Nuff said.

This was news to us because we’ve been using Windows on an iPad since .. well .. the iPad1 was launched in 2010. In fact, even before that we had Windows on iPhones via our hosted desktop service and a clever piece of client software called the Citrix Receiver. So, all in all, the claim to uniqueness was a fairly bold one.

Not only that, but the Onlive experience isn’t that great; with only limited integration between the device and the desktop – in fact you can read what a more cautious Computerworld reviewer said about it here.

Our message to iPad (or Android) business users would be, Onlive is not the best or the only experience available for you. The truth is, you get what you pay for and Onlive desktop is … free. If you’d like to try out a commercial alternative then get in touch.

In part, a response to a 2011 Executive Order to Agencies to limit the number of devices that are issued to employees, the new report shows that more and more sensitive data is now being accessed and stored on devices that are outside Federal Control. Only slightly less than 30% of the respondents claim to have a mobile device management solution in place to handle remote wipe/lock of lost or stolen devices – raising the spectre of data falling into in appropriate hands.

Much of that risk can be reduced, by the use of Hosted Desktop or Hosted Application technology, since this does not store any data on the device being used to access the Federal Systems.  Communication between the data centres and the device are encrypted using SSL and with the addition of three-factor authentication the employee device can be as secure as anything issued by the Employer.

For more information about Hosted Desktops and why they are the future of IT delivery, contact us