Business owners must ensure the security and availability of company applications and data. Delivering on this mandate can be difficult enough on closely managed, company-owned machines
However, with increasing frequency, the additional wrinkle exists of supporting PCs over which ultimate control lies outside of the company. A growing number of employees are looking to use their own personal PCs and laptops in their jobs as well.
Two key factors playing into this loss of control are trends toward consumerism and mobilization in computing. The range of computing product options marketed to individual users has expanded, and the ease with which these systems can move between home and work has increased. As a result, businesses are faced with supporting or tolerating systems their users have brought in from home.
Some companies actively pursue employee-owned notebook schemes as a means of boosting productivity and reducing support costs among workers who own computers, laptops or netbooks.
Companies always have the option of banning the use of company data or applications on systems brought from home (with the inevitable exception of users with enough clout to bend the rules), but there are plenty of situations in which the line between authorized and forbidden systems can't be so clear.
For instance, companies work in many cases with contractors or partners who own their own machines, or telecommuting workers who live outside the range of the business office.
It makes sense to develop a set of strategies for ensuring sufficient levels of data security and application accessibility for user systems that fall outside of the office environment.
It's not an easy problem to tackle, most importantly because the administrative rights over a user-controlled desktop or notebook scheme are such that users have the right to install (purposely or unknowingly) arbitrary software on their machines, some of which could be malicious or harmful in purpose or practice.
Since trying to enforce good policy on machines that lie outside the control of the business is such a tricky proposition, a simpler way to install controls involves situating a tightly controlled hosted desktop environment within the employee's machine.
ManaSyst’s remote Desktop Host is the best solution to the problem of working with user-controlled desktop and notebook systems. The approach involves carving out an isolated and closely managed environment within an otherwise unmanaged system.