mindSHIFT, an industry leader in delivering managed IT services to
businesses, today launched NextDesktop, an online service that provides
small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) with the first affordable hosted
Windows desktop solution.
With prices starting at $39.99 per user per month – vs. more than $100
per seat per month for competing hosted desktop solutions – NextDesktop
extends mindSHIFT’s managed desktop line to provide a basic Windows
desktop to budget-conscious organizations that don’t require the
comprehensive 24-hour hardware, server, network, Help Desk and file
restoration support of mindSHIFT’s fully-managed desktop solutions.
The NextDesktop service provides an affordable option for budget-conscious organizations, especially:
* Start-ups
* SMBs needing to replace out-of-warranty PCs and laptops
* SMBs adding new employees or new offices
* SMBs with employees who do not use graphics or multimedia-intensive applications
"With the launch of NextDesktop, mindSHIFT is removing the costly and
burdensome tasks of desktop management for small and medium-sized
businesses that until now have been beyond their reach," said Ravi
Agarwal, senior executive officer of technology innovation at
mindSHIFT. "Hosted desktops were once thought to be the domain of large
enterprises. But that’s changing with our new hosted Windows desktop –
a cheaper, better, faster solution to SMBs’ PC challenges."
"Small and medium-sized organizations want lower cost computing
capabilities, but they don’t want to sacrifice security, performance or
reliability. NextDesktop’s hosted desktop service meets these
requirements and provides a viable alternative to deploying traditional
PCs," said Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies and
an industry expert on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), cloud computing and
managed services.
Compared to traditional PCs and other hosted desktops, NextDesktop
offers a more cost-effective and worry-free alternative to effectively
address SMB IT needs:
1. Lower operational and capital expenditure costs, with the lowest
price in the market and the ability to either utilize existing hardware
or purchase less expensive thin client devices
2. Reduced IT burden, eliminating the need to upgrade PCs, provide
security, back up files, apply anti-virus and other patches, maintain
IT Help Desk services and manage software upgrades.
3. Better security, with real-time anti-virus and anti-spyware
updates, ongoing Microsoft patches, and storage and backup of all a
business’s Windows desktop data, documents and applications in
NextDesktop’s secure data center.
Because the data and applications are stored, or "hosted" in the secure
data center, employees can access their desktop data and applications
from any location using any PC, laptop, thin client or smartphone – as
long as they have an Internet connection on their device.
In addition, NextDesktop offers online provisioning, based on
mindSHIFT’s proprietary technology, allowing businesses to add and
remove users within seconds, compared with hours or days required with
other approaches. Furthermore, mindSHIFT uses Internap’s® Performance
IP(TM) technology to provide stable, predictable Internet performance,
which enhances employee productivity by preventing the lag time, or
latency, which is typical of other hosted solutions. With this
technology, emails and other data are routed via the fastest network
based on a proactive, real-time analysis of Internet traffic and
bottlenecks.
mindSHIFT manages nearly 80,000 mailboxes and 20,000 desktops for
professional workers in small and mid-sized organizations. A team of
385 employees provides IT support and IT services to more than 10,000
organizations in more than 100 countries.
For $39.99 per user per month, NextDesktop includes the following features:
# Access to office desktop from everywhere, all the time
# Choice of Office applications for productivity options:
* OpenOffice: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, and Base
* Microsoft Office 2007: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook (an additional $9.99/seat/month)
# Data and applications, including Windows, running in mindSHIFT’s 24x7x365 Tier 4 data center
# Effective management of lag time with Internap® Performance IP(TM) to decrease latency
# Instant Office feature – Web-based control panel for immediate setup
of new users and services by authorized administrative user
# PDF creator and Adobe Reader
# 1 GB of disk space for each user to store documents
# Daily backup of all data
# Real-time anti-virus and anti-spyware updates from Trend Micro
# Live U.S.-based Help Desk via telephone and email
# Timely, transparent software patches and updates
# Month-to-month contract
Available upgrades include Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 email;
BlackBerry, iPhone and other smartphone synchronization to Outlook
email, calendar and tasks; email archiving; SharePoint; and Microsoft
Dynamics CRM.
