LATHAM, NEW YORK (August 20, 2013) – Sustainable IT solutions provider TurnKey Internet, Inc. announced today the rerelease of their cloud-hosted virtual desktop, the “TurnKey Desk 2.0.” With all new, easy-to-use features, the TurnKey Desk is now available on any smartphone, tablet, thin client, desktop PC or Mac. The platform is made easier to access, and can be preloaded with many more applications useful for individuals and businesses. Applications such as Microsoft Office and the Adobe Creative Suite or any customizable business applications needed, can be installed to the virtual desktop.

“By incorporating smartphones and tablets, the way a client can use the TurnKey Desk is almost limitless,” CEO, Adam Wills said. “Both start-up entrepreneurs and experienced CEO’s need a way to be able to easily work from their home, office, or while they are traveling. The TurnKey Desk allows this. Our virtual desktop provides security for any sized business to be confident that their information will always be safe and accessible in our SSAE-16 Type 2 certified data center.”

The TurnKey Desk can be used for companies where hundreds of employees are able to share files and documents with each other, be it down the hall, across the country or around the globe. Files can be accessed, shared and stored securely on the cloud to help make sharing documents easier and more efficient. The new platform allows for the option to have multiple images for various departments of an organization. These images contain the software applications specific for each department which can all be preset with permission levels for each user.

“Hosted Virtual Desktop market share is increasing every day. One of the reasons why, is the ability to replace aging office Desktop PC networks with Virtual Desktops accessed from thin clients,” Wills stated. “Thin clients cost far less than PC’s with less moving parts and need for maintenance. Since thin clients are only being used to access the virtual desktops, there are almost no IT related costs for your internal network once it is setup. Additionally, this improves your overall network security from our New York data center and decreases your overall costs.”

About Turnkey Internet

Founded in 1999, TurnKey Internet, Inc. is a full-service green data center and leading provider of sustainable web hosting and IT solutions. From its SSAE 16 Type 2 certified facility in Latham, NY—New York’s Tech Valley Region—TurnKey offers web hosting, communication services, web-based IT systems, software as a service (SaaS), enterprise colocation services, and computing as a service to clients in more than 150 countries. For more information, please call (518) 618-0999 or visit www.turnkeyinternet.net/media.

Why move to the cloud? Here is June’s cloud tip.

Let us do the work…

When we say that by putting everything on the cloud can reduce your worry of keeping a track of hardware and software devices, we probably want to make your existing physical world into a virtual one. With managed cloud services you don’t have to bother about what’s going on in your in-house IT premises. Let your cloud manager do the burdensome work and help you get rid of all the expensive hardware and software that cost you almost an arm or a leg.

Why move to the cloud? Here is April’s cloud tip:

A disaster recovery plan helps to restore data quickly…

For your cloud network to be as successful as it can be, a pre-configured disaster recovery plan is must. Cloud disaster recovery plans work automatically, at the time your server or data crashes. This helps in restoring at the earliest time possible. Incorporating such back-up and recovery applications makes the cloud an efficient platform for competitively managing IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

Why move to the cloud? Here is March’s quick cloud tip:

Cloud technology optimizes existing resources…

Suppose your company is facing hard times in managing hardware and software. Let’s say your servers are running extremely low on space, and there is not enough room left for any new data to be stored. To overcome such a situation, cloud services can be employed. In turn, existing servers get a rest from the over-loaded traffic, and the work environment of the company becomes more synchronized.

Moving to the cloud optimizes your resources, but with the help of managed cloud services, businesses are able to focus time and attention on other business-related activities.

Why move to the cloud? Here is January’s quick cloud tip:

The cloud follows the “pay-for-what-you-use” model…

This particular characteristic of the cloud focuses on the fact that cloud computing and managed cloud services are truly cost-effective. This means that users will have to pay only for the amount of service used by them. This way, money spent on improving business through the cloud does not entail extra, unnecessary expenses. Small to medium businesses benefit the most from the type of facility the cloud offers, but large businesses benefit as well.

“Hindsight gives you 20/20 vision,” is a statement you should keep in mind as you read this blog article. Many businesses that were just recently affected in some way by Hurricane Sandy could have avoided the complete standstill to their services by preparing and planning out just what they would do if their facility suffered a catastrophic loss. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes,  snow storms, flooding, and fire are some of the most obvious causes of potentially disastrous losses that could halt the operations of a business. In fact, the property of a business does not even have to have any direct damage for a natural disaster to halt their business. For example, loss of electricity, telephone, or internet connectivity can cause problems with functionality, as those services are paramount.

The question any disaster recovery consultant will ask you is, “how would your business survive if it was affected short-term and/or long-term by some catastrophic event?” If you understand that any type of disaster could destroy your computing infrastructure – where all of your company records and data are stored, which could quite possibly destroy your business – then you should have a plan in place to alleviate that possibility.

At the very least, any business that uses computing to manage their operations should have an off-site back-up of their most important data and records. This is not a very expensive strategy, it is something that can be entirely automated, and it does not even need to be accessed until you actually need to use it. There are automated back-up systems available from most data-centers, which back-up your data as frequently as you desire. The incremental changes made in the time-frame chosen are then sent across the internet through an encrypted protocol, and stored in a managed backup system at the data center. Usually, the client is provided with a secure web interface to access those files as needed. These back-ups can also be used to restore individual data files that may have become deleted or damaged at any time, and downloaded back to the computers in your office.

The next step up from simply backing-up your data for protection from a disaster would be hosting some, to all, of your regular computing infrastructure in a data center (cloud computing). If you hosted your main office server in a data center and accessed your files over the Internet from the PCs in your office, you could survive a disaster from a computing standpoint. All of your important data could then be accessed from a temporary, remote location, or even by having your employees work from home until the office is re-established. Many companies are now hosting their entire computing infrastructure in a data center; everything from virtual PCs to their application servers. These can then be accessed through just about any device that is connected to the internet, such as a PC, Mac, tablet, and many types of smartphones.

Communicating with your customer base during and after any disaster is vital in many cases. When your email and telephone systems are cut off, and you and your customers can no longer communicate, this could be extremely damaging to your business. By hosting your email server at a data center, you have access to your email system through almost any device connected to the internet.

One of the data center services that is really gaining popularity lately is VOIP-based hosted phone systems. In a VOIP-based system, The PBX system normally nailed to the wall in an office is replaced by a PBX server in a data center. Management and administration of the system is then done though a web interface. All phone communication is channeled through voice over Internet protocol (VOIP).  The advantage of this in a disaster is that your phone system is always intact. You can access your administration portal over the Internet and change any settings that may be necessary, such as adding additional extensions for remote users. Staff members can work from remote locations or at home, by accessing the phone system with a softphone on their PC or by having their calls transferred from their extensions to their cell phones.

I have suggested that data center services, TurnKey Internet included, are great solutions to the issues surrounding disaster recovery. The key reason is that they have multiple redundancies in place to provide 100% up-time guarantees. At TurnKey Internet, we have multiple fiber providers supplying our Internet and bandwidth through diverse physical paths into our facility. We have complicated switch gear in place to maintain your connections, in case one or some of the fiber connections coming into the building are disrupted. Additionally, our power supply is backed-up with both a robust battery back-up supply to all servers and equipment, as well as an on-site diesel generator that can power our facility long-term if necessary.  For these reasons and more, anyone considering disaster recovery planning should consider the options available from reputable data centers like ours at TurnKey Internet, to insure that their business is not damaged long-term by a catastrophic event that had not been planned for.

Cloud computing has improved to the point that virtualizing the office computing needs should be an option. Depending on the size of an organization, as well as how they use computing applications in the business process, there are a multitude of options that should be considered.

Before you consider the options available and how they could benefit your organization, we feel the need first to define exactly what cloud computing actually is. Cloud computing is nothing more than placing your organization’s applications and information in a datacenter and accessing those applications and data over the Internet.

By understanding the concept of cloud computing, you should now be able to grasp the idea of what a virtual office infrastructure is. Instead of the office server that stores and runs your applications being located on premises, it would be hosted in a datacenter. The same basic setup you have in your office would simply be set-up more efficiently and securely in a datacenter and instead of accessing the applications through your local area network(LAN), you would access your applications over the internet. The major change would be, instead of getting to work and logging onto the PC at your desk, you would be logging into the virtual desktops of your organization which would all be connected to the cloud-based server, thus forming a virtual office.

Seems like a fairly simple concept so why all the buzz about cloud computing? As with most new concepts, there are also two opposing opinions on the subject of cloud computing benefits.

One decision maker sees the ability to enable an organization to access to the company computing infrastructure from anywhere at anytime from any device that is connected to the internet. This would give their outside sales team the ability to better communicate with the office staff as well as provide their customers real-time information on their products and services. Cloud computing would also allow that same company the ability of letting some of their staff to work from home as an option or by choice. Additionally, with cloud computing, you have built-in disaster recovery. If some sort of catastrophic event such as a fire or flood were to occur at the main office, the company could still operate with its office staff accessing their work from home or a temporary remote office enabling them to communicate with their customers and still carry on the business operations.

Additionally, from a financial viewpoint, your overall computing expenses will be reduced as you no longer will need to finance a continually aging and outdated computing platform as well as eliminating the costs such as power, cooling and office space to run a computing environment.

The opposing side sees cloud computing as not yet proven as a concept or maybe they don’t like the idea of not controlling and managing the company hardware. They may not believe in the concept of allowing employees access to the computing infrastructure from outside the office which they may feel would not be as secure. It could be that the IT manager of the company is worried that his job could be in jeopardy if the company moves to cloud computing, and instead embracing the opportunity to improve their company’s computing system, he is doing everything in his power to convince the decision makers not to consider cloud computing as an option.

The truth of the matter is, office virtualization and cloud computing are here, rapidly growing, and being embraced by both large and small organizations all over the world. Similar to how it is now commonplace that everyone has their own cell phone, every business will eventually be participating in some sort of cloud computing offering. You can choose to maintain your status quo or start taking advantage of the accessibility, scalability, security, and cost savings of virtualizing your office with cloud computing — or you can sit back and wait a bit longer to see if this is just a fad that will pass — like, for instance, like the telephone booth.