I always find it valuable to learn from a supplier’s customers. This time, one of Desktone’s customers, Paladin Building Services, communicated with me about Desktone and the “Desktop as a Service” concept.
Please introduce yourself and your company
Jeffrey Aibel, President and CEO of Paladin Building Services. Paladin is a commercial building services contractor that provides maintenance services for facilities throughout Florida and Georgia.
What were you doing that needed this type of technology?
We previously used thin clients. The thin clients were getting old and would have been expensive to replace. We selected low cost, remanufactured, desktop machines with Windows 7 and Microsoft Security Essentials running that were less than half the cost of replacement Thin Clients. We do no work locally so all we needed was a good network card. With no internal IT staff, we didn’t want to set up and maintain on-site desktop virtualization infrastructure. We looked at cloud-hosted virtual desktops as a way to ensure reliable in-office and remote access for our employees without the cost and time investment that would have been required for new, in-office infrastructure.
What products did you consider before making a decision?
We considered a handful of traditional VDI vendors, including Citrix and VMware. In the end we decided we wanted something more than just a data center infrastructure setup.
Why did you select this product?
We selected Desktone’s cloud platform because it offered a simple, scalable and cost-effective alternative to traditional VDI deployments. We could deploy desktops within minutes to employees in the office or on the road, giving them always-on access to programs and applications.
Additionally, Desktone provided the best long-term vision. They take care of the infrastructure, management and ongoing support, so we can stay focused on building our business and not on building the IT systems and processes to run the business.
What tangible benefits have you gotten through the use of this product?
With Desktone’s DaaS platform we can quickly provision desktops on any device. This level of flexibility and scalability is important as we are expanding our business and needed a solution that could grow with us in scale and geographic reach.
Disaster recovery is another important benefit. Because our desktops are hosted in the cloud the DaaS platform is always there for us. As long as we can plug into the Internet, we’re in business.
What advice would you offer others?
My advice for other SMBs would be to take a close look at Desktops as a Service (DaaS) as an alternative to managing desktops locally. Building and supporting your own network requires a big investment in both time and money and can shift your focus away from your core business. With DaaS, SMBs can avoid capital expenditures in hardware and software while ensuring that employees have access to full-featured virtual desktops from anywhere.
