10 Reasons for Choosing Hosted Desktop

1. Highest levels of physical and virtual security

Our infrastructure is housed in two of the most secure data centres in the UK which are accredited to ISO 27001 and PCI DSS standards providing the highest levels of both physical and virtual security. We have clustered servers and services with automatic fail over. All transmissions over the Internet to and from your hosted desktop are encrypted, we use SSL encryption – the same as that used for online banking and secure payments.

2. Have anywhere access to your applications and data

A hosted desktop from TWIN gives you the ability to access your applications and data from anywhere with an internet connection and suitably enabled device, this might include laptops, thin clients, smartphones, and iPads and similar tablets, using wired, WiFi, and 3G/4G connections. Some examples might include:

• Staff working from home if bad weather prevents them getting to the office
• Work as normal while making Inter-City train journeys using free on-board WiFi
• Have full access to your applications and data while working at client site

3. Expert Technical Support

We have our own internal technical support team they have many years of experience in providing IT support to the professional services sector. Support is available by phone and email during standard office hours, through support emails being monitored outside of these hours by on call staff, and 24/7/365 via self-help knowledge-base articles.

4. We back-up and replicate your data daily

We back-up data daily and perform a complete back-up and replication of the entire system and services ensuring business continuity in the unlikely event of system failures at either site. This is all included in your basic package but we also offer a ‘Backup-to-Site’ service and a ‘Premium Snapshot’ service which is able to schedule snapshots of your data more frequently to provide a wider range of restore/recovery points.

5. Reliability that gives peace of mind

The reliability of hosted services is provided by the TWIN fail-safe backup system, it gives you peace of mind that your business critical data is protected and your business will not have to suffer the catastrophic consequences of data loss. Our Service Level Agreement (SLA) provides a guaranteed minimum of 99.9% availability, with service credits available if this is not met.

6. Great level of speed and performance

A hosted desktop does not require processing or data to be transmitted over the Internet, the data remains on our servers in the data centres. All that travels over the internet are simple screen scrapes, user keystrokes, and mouse movements, consequently, the speed of internet connection required is often lower than expected; we find that typically a 1Mbps connection per 10-20 users will provide a good level of speed and performance.

7. Saves money on in-house IT infrastructure

Using our hosted services means you will no longer need to buy or maintain expensive in-house servers with their associated support costs. Users will be able to replace traditional desktop PC’s with low cost – low power consumption ‘Thin Clients’ (basically small form factor PC’s) which act as a portal to your virtual server, they can be setup and have you working from your desktop in a matter of a few minutes.

8. You only pay for the services you need

With TWIN our clients can select the services which are relevant to them without having to pay for services they don’t need, we price all add on products individually so that you can purchase only those you do need or add them at any time in the future. You can add any number of applications to your hosted desktop service at no extra charge and users can be added and/or removed with minimal notice. We also offer shared and part-time desktops for users who work fewer than normal days/hours each week.

9. We won’t be charging you for hidden extras

Our pricing is extremely competitive and our quotes totally transparent, we won’t be charging you for any hidden extras. Our basic desktop price includes fully managed migration from your own servers, or another hosting service, we also carry out all software updates for you as required. We do not tie users into long term contracts the standard notice period to leave our service is just three months.

10. Improves your cash flow

TWIN’s hosted desktop services are charged on a ‘per user per month’ basis giving you tighter control over costs and aiding your company’s cash flow. Using a hosted solution also means you won’t receive any unexpected bills for repair or replacement of ageing or unreliable in-house servers.