If you read today IT industry blogs, sites and tweets from opinion leaders you see a lot of discussion around that the future hub or workplace for users will be in the cloud and users in future will use a web desktop to manage their digital lives which combines private and business life.
But what is a web desktop really?
A web desktop is an application or service that allows the user to store his data and access his application from any device or location. The big difference is that a web desktop provides the freedom to truly be mobile and access all your data and applications from a browser. The web desktop cuts the bounds to the actual physical device and follows you where ever you need.
Isn’t that an old story?Concepts like terminal servers and virtual desktop infrastructures (i.e. “VDI”) make the same claim. It’s true that these concepts have some things in common but the technological approach is completely different. Terminal servers and VDI rely on re-building the actual client computing environment in the backend and letting the users access it with special client applications (e.g. Citrix Receiver). Of course this allows for an efficient deployment, management and hosting of desktops. Server based computing shifts the focus from the client to the backend but it also requires additional licenses software licenses. These approaches however create other big issues, scalability for one.
VDI might be the right choice for enterprises to cut cost for their desktop users, but it´s definitely not for service providers that intend to offer business applications to their SME customers. First, because VDI is consuming way too much computing resources and bandwidth, which makes it inefficient and expensive. Second, because VDI is not designed for multi-tenancy and there for does not scale. Furthermore Microsoft has created license terms that do not allow services providers to offer hosted desktops.
In contrary to a VDI, a fully browser-based web desktop like OX App Suite is designed to scale for millions. It is built on the state-of-the-art technologies HTML5 and JavaScript. OX App Suite makes best use of local storage of modern browsers, which reduces the workload on the server backend to a minimum.
So why should you care?There is tons of market intelligence and analytics out that expect exploding demand for business applications and mobile applications in the next three years. With OX App Suite, hosters and telco´s can deploy a web desktop that sits exactly at the crossroads of these growth trends and lay the ground to sell additional storage and applications.
For the increasing amount of end users that prefer to use multiple devices – PC, laptop, tablet and smartphone – to get their work done and manage their personal digital life, a web desktop is just the compelling solution to get rid of all hurdles, let it be installation, backup or syncing.
If service providers don´t take that chance, others will. The over-the-top Giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft are already approaching consumers, SoHos, SMEs with their multiple services as well as agile start-ups like Dropbox do.
With users spending hours every day on email, calendars, contacts and files, OX App Suite gives service providers the ideal tool to take back the seamless experience and control of their brand everywhere the value of their customer base is during the course of the day. At the same time OX App Suite delivers a complete new approach to upsell additional services directly within the web desktop with just one click.
If you want to know how to build such a service, then just let us know. We at Open-Xchange can help you with that. OX App Suite is the perfect solution for delivering a best-in-class web desktop experience.