With so much benefit awaiting companies in the cloud, those who have yet to embrace hosted services may be left behind as their competitors reduce the cost of operations and gain more flexibility in their growth. The latter group is rapidly moving toward not only the use of the cloud, but also the adoption of desktop as a service (DaaS) and hosted phone systems.
Responding to this growing demand, Appia recently announced that it is entering the DaaS market, providing customers with a cloud-based Microsoft (News - Alert) experience. The company believes users will embrace the opportunities with the desktop in the cloud, just as they have hosted phone systems. Both have been proven to reduce the cost of operation and allow IT staff to focus on projects considered mission-critical rather than communications and simple operations.
Appia customers can enjoy access to Windows 7 out of the gate, with access to hosted Exchange, Adobe (News - Alert) Reader and various other browsers. The company will also offer business applications, print, file, domain and storage servers, as well as secure backup for business continuity. Appia positions its solutions as more secure as data is being stored in the cloud and not locally.
The demand for hosted solutions is continuing to drive fierce competition in the broader market. More organizations are entering the DaaS space as using the cloud for the operation of the desktop and communications streamlines so much of the office backend that companies can focus more heavily on driving revenue and securing opportunities for growth. So attractive are the benefits that demand is rapidly increasing, drawing in companies like Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) to compete against Citrix, Microsoft and VMware.
Distributors are also seeing the potential in this space, leveraging partnerships with cloud services providers to expand their reach. For instance, Arrow recently added the DaaS offerings from independenceIT to its ArrowSphere marketplace. As the benefits continue to surface and drive opportunities for companies leveraging the cloud for DaaS and hosted phone systems, the market is expected to continue to expand.
For those companies that already have access to the phone and operating systems they need to perform effectively, what’s the big push to move to the cloud? Mobility has a lot to do with it. Hosted phone systems and DaaS help to extend the office environment onto the tablet and smartphone, removing the requirement that professionals have to work from the office and giving them better capabilities while on the move.
As companies continue to embrace mobility and flexible work environment, it only makes sense to leverage the capabilities of the cloud to streamline operations, reduce costs and stay ahead of the competition.
Edited by Alisen Downey