How Cloud PCs are making businesses more flexible

From the perspective of a business owner, imagine that your company was capable of the following:

• Hiring talent across the world, irrespective of where they reside.
• Running powerful, resource-intensive apps/tools on affordable devices.
• Effortlessly scale up and down, depending on the number of employees/workspaces required.
• Complete virtual control over all company data, no matter where employee devices are.
• Simple security implementations that don’t need access to the employee's device.
• Separation of device configuration/specs and employee productivity.

Needless to say, if a business could leverage the functions/attributes above, it would experience a significant amount of flexibility and, most importantly, much lower TCO. Fortunately, achieving such flexibility is no longer a great challenge for businesses, thanks to the emergence and popularity of Cloud PCs.

What is a Cloud PC?

Cloud PCs offer a native desktop experience, replicating the appearance, operations, and capabilities of a personal device OS. The difference is that the OS, desktop, and apps are located entirely in the cloud.

In other words, on a cloud PC, you log in through your browser (like you do on websites) and access a desktop with all requisite tools and features - but it runs off a remote server's resources and computing powers. The device used to log in only expends the resources required to stay on, connect to the internet and keep a single browser running. Imagine what this means for a business:

Employees can work on a cloud-based desktop that runs heavy apps like dev and design tools.

• The desktop is completely customizable.
• It is accessible on any device, including tablets and mobile devices.
• No downloads are required.
• No need for company-issued devices. As long as the employee has a device with internet connectivity, they can use the cloud PC to work.

Unsurprisingly, cloud PCs have become particularly popular since the pandemic, given the rise and prevalence of remote work.

Suggested read: Open your new office in the Cloud

Why switch to the cloud for business flexibility?

Hire talent from any location:

Since you no longer have to rely on a brick-and-mortar office to get work done, your talent pool is no longer confined to people who can come into the office. Cloud PCs ensure that individuals can access necessary technology for work. As long as they have an internet-enabled desktop, laptop, or mobile device, their location becomes a non-issue for hiring suitability.

Cloud PCs allow companies to employ the best possible people by eliminating what was once a pivotal barrier: location.

Lower cost of device purchase:

Typically, companies purchase or lease devices for every employee they hire. If these employees are power users, their devices will have to be fairly high-end (think Macbook Pro and the like).

However, with cloud PCs, the performance of necessary tools no longer depends on the device's software/hardware specifications. All heavy lifting is done by cloud servers, which means that resource-intensive apps can be run easily on less expensive devices with lower computing abilities.

Essentially, you won’t have to buy expensive devices for each employee. And even if you need to provide them, you could purchase affordable machines such as Chromebooks and send them across. Even on barebones, using heavy IDEs and design tools is effortless with
Cloud PCs. What’s the point of spending more money on Macbooks, then?

Read more: The best way to run heavy apps on a Chromebook

No boundaries to business growth:

Thanks to remote work quickly becoming a norm, we don’t expect businesses to maintain a physical presence in every geography they operate in. It doesn’t matter if your client is in the Netherlands and you are in South Korea; cloud PCs have made it possible to provide consistent, high-quality products and services across regions/countries/continents.

Faster, simpler, and smarter security implementation:

It is reasonable for business owners to worry about the security and integrity of corporate data. With employee devices scattered across locations, it makes sense that data may be exposed if the employee loses/misplaces their device. Confidential data may also become exposed to malicious elements or unethical competitive practices if the device is lost.

Cloud PCs eliminate this concern by ensuring that no company data needs to be downloaded or stored on the employee’s local device. Everything they use - tools, data, downloads - remain on the cloud PC. The cloud PC itself is secured, and that too remotely.

Let’s say an employee reports that their laptop was lost. Instead of worrying about any files stored on the device, someone from the IT team can simply disable this particular employee’s login credentials. That way, even if someone tries to log into their cloud desktop and has the employee’s credentials, they cannot touch the data.

Companies can also set up these cloud desktops to log out automatically after certain periods of inactivity. Therefore, even if the employee does not log out, their data is secured nonetheless.

Reduced maintenance and support costs:

With all apps and tools running off remote servers, employee devices wouldn’t suffer the usual wear-and-tear of running those apps. Consequently, devices last longer and require less maintenance, repair, and support.

Companies spend a lot less on employee devices because they malfunction less frequently. They also have to pay less for hardware or software vendors' support services, which frees up money for more important investments.

If there are any issues with the cloud desktop, IT teams can remotely handle them since the entire setup is device independent. Employees don’t have to go to a support center or ship their devices for examination, further driving down costs and preventing breaks in productivity.

Easy scaling up and down:

With in-office setups, every new hire means time and money spent on purchasing a new device and waiting for it to be shipped - which can take days or weeks.

With cloud PCs, no such thing. Your cloud vendor can trigger a new, personalized, customizable cloud-native desktop in a few minutes. It will already have the required apps pre-installed and pre-configured. Hence, businesses spend no time installing apps, security monitoring mechanisms, and more.

The difference in time - from days to minutes - boosts productivity and flexibility. In many cases, the business won’t have to ship a device. Therefore, they can conduct business in distant locations if the employee has an adequate internet connection.

Suggested read: Elaborate Engineering with Neverinstall: Reactive and pre-emptive scaling

How Neverinstall makes a big difference in business flexibility

A quick glimpse at some of Neverinstall’s key features should display its efficacy in terms of expanding and empowering your business:

• You get a functional Linux-backed desktop that anyone can use on any device with an internet connection. The experience is like working on a personal device, but access to the workspace is through a browser.
• No downloads, setups, or configurations are necessary. All apps are pre-installed and pre-configured every time you launch a workspace.
• Multiple popular applications to choose from, a few of which are:

1. Dev tools: VS Code, Android Studio, Neovim
2. Browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Brave
3. Utility: Obsidian. Slack, Telegram
4. Design: Blender, Gimp, Figma

• Spaces optimized for mobile devices - responsive design, single-touch and multi-touch interactions across device classes, and a virtual keyboard.
• Users can launch their cloud desktop to browse at higher internet speeds or use the platform as a VPN by launching in Europe or the USA.
• Low latency application streaming thanks to our use of the WebRTC streaming protocol.
• Hassle-free usage of input devices like keyboard and mouse.
• A globally distributed server network that continues to expand. Current server clusters are in the US, England, Singapore, and India. New server clusters are coming up in Japan, Australia, Finland, Spain, The Netherlands, and more locations in the US.

Expand to Exceptional with Cloud PCs

Cloud PCs, without exaggeration, are on their way to becoming the workspaces of the future. Even beyond its other advantages, the cost savings alone (with no drop in productivity) give businesses an irrefutable reason to consider cloud-native desktops.

Add to this the fact that employees increasingly prefer remote work, and it becomes easy to find solid reasons to adopt tools like Neverinstall. Increased user retention, accelerated productivity, a larger talent pool, and a lower TCO are only some advantages business owners can consistently leverage for organizational flexibility.

Discover boundless flexibility and surpass the limitations of personal devices with Neverinstall. Sign up today or write to us at sales@neverinstall.com to know more.