Last month Amazon Web Services announced it was entering the Hosted Desktop market to compete with other multi-national players including Citrix, VMWare and soon Microsoft, who is working on its own DaaS solution.

Amazon’s entry to this market establishes the Hosted Desktop as a solid choice for the IT needs of a company and is a clear indicator of future growth of this sector as a whole, or as President John F. Kennedy put it, ‘ A rising tide lifts all boats’ and Amazon can definitely create a tide. With competition accelerating, it might be helpful to examine how the newcomers’ products might stack up against the hosted desktops currently being offered by smaller hosted desktop service providers.

The most commonly used desktop today is Microsoft software (with well over 90% of desktop O/S being provided by Microsoft according to Net Market Share www.netmarketshare.com), so it is reasonable to assume that Microsoft will be able to offer this software as a service.

However, unlike Office 365 or Google Apps, which are respectively solely Microsoft or Google products, the desktop is the place where customers can view and access all their software, not only Microsoft. When sitting in the office in front of their desktop, the user will usually find a range of icons representing many different software vendors, most of which are not Microsoft.

Independent Hosted Desktop vendors that specialise in providing a Virtual Hosted Desktop service can host more than 100 different software products from over 100 different companies for their customers. These can include software for accounting, CRM, CV management, inventory, time tracking for legal billing and many more.

However, for a large software vendor to provide a similar service, they will need to simplify the product so that every piece of 3rd party software is designed for their platform in the same way that apps are designed for Android and IOS. If all software cannot seamlessly link into the desktop, then professional services are required to set up customers, add and remove software, set up directories and deal with applications with diverse performances.

For many businesses, IT still has its complexities, and to simplify it for the user, the business needs an IT department or in the case of an SMB business, a Hosted Desktop provider.

Yes, small businesses that require only files and emails (and are somewhat IT savvy) can replace their IT support with ‘off the shelf’ solutions such as Office 365 and Google Apps, but for a business that has databases, servers, non-Microsoft software packages, or has backup and redundancy requirements, a more personalised and tailored solution is needed.

Using an independent provider a business can maintain a high degree of flexibility, this is because independents can offer to ‘mix’ vendors, such as hosting a Microsoft Desktop on Amazon Web Services, or even by hosting an antiquated ‘green screen’ IBM AS400. They will also be able to offer Citrix or Microsoft’s RDP, Hosted Linux OS, Parallels for Macs and other products. Whether the big companies offering Hosted Desktop solutions will inform the customers of the variety of competing software or give preference to their own software is yet to be seen.

Lastly a ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) model means that customers no longer buy a license but rather rent it, while the software and all the data associated with the software including personal data are hosted by the provider, sometimes outside the EU. While this is adequate for many customers, others might prefer to ensure their data is hosted within the UK or EU by EU companies for legal or regulatory reasons – particularly in light of comments made recently by Viviane Reding, the Vice President of the European Commission[i] about data protection outside the EU potentially adhering to lower standards.

If moving to a Hosted Desktop solution is on the cards for 2014, business decision makers need to consider their options carefully. If their business requirements are simple –they just use email, don’t have a in-house servers or an IT department then an ‘off the shelf’ solution such as Google apps or Office365 would be appropriate.

However, if a business is too mature and sophisticated for a simple ‘off the shelf’ product, yet too nimble to justify a costly full internal IT department, a tailored bespoke Hosted Desktop is not only cost-effective, hassle-free and environmentally friendly; it is probably the best technical solution on the market.

Here are some considerations for anyone moving to a hosted desktop solution in 2014:

• Price is a key consideration, but so is security, flexibility, location and the quality of the customer service from the provider.

• When considering price, ensure apples are compared with apples. Does the price quoted include e-mail, support, set-up, storage, anti-virus and spam filters?

• Security – check the provider is ISO 27000 accredited and verify the quality of their Data Centre. Is anti-virus software and enterprise grade firewalls included as part of the solution?

• Flexibility – is your managed service provider independent? Are they tied to one software provider or can they create the perfect, tailored solution for your business?

• Location – is it important for you to have you data stored by a UK company in the UK?

• Customer Service – is it local and how quickly will the customer services team respond? Does this service cost extra?

• References - what do other customers have to say about the provider? Make sure you obtain references to ensure you are making the right decision.