Hosted desktop - A virtual IT infrastructure
Extrasys hosts remote Microsoft Windows desktops for customers on a Citrix server farm in our very own data centre. Users access remotely their hosted data, email and applications via the web using SSL and a small key fob that generates one time passcodes for maximum security.
Features of the Extrasys Hosted Desktop:
- Windows Server 2003 desktop 1, 2
- Microsoft Office applications 3
- Microsoft Exchange email & webmail 4
- Anti-virus & Anti-spam protection
- Create, merge and view PDF files
- Network drive for file sharing 5
- File archiving (zipping) software
- Security token for remote access 6
- Automated back-ups and data retrieval
- Email, telephone & remote support 7
- Hosted Microsoft & non-Microsoft Windows applications 8
- Scaleable user numbers 9
- Data storage allowance 10
- Managed AD security groups & internal email distribution lists 11, 12
Technical details
- Technical requirements for accessing your desktop are listed in our provisioning requirements statement
- Microsoft Windows Server Enterprise User Licenses, Windows Terminal Server User Licenses and Citrix Licenses are included
- Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003/2007 software includes Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint and Word; and this can be upgraded at any time to the Professional Plus Edition, which includes all the Standard Edition software plus InfoPath, Publisher and Access
- Business email addresses can be pointed or forwarded to the Extrasys Exchange Server if required. Extrasys users can then securely access their Microsoft Outlook email, calendar and contacts data from their hosted desktops, webmail, or from many web enabled devices such as PDAs and mobile phones
- Each user has a U drive for personal files and also has access to the shared S drive for their company - as well as any drives or printers that are accessible to the device they are connecting from. Users can also access their local C drive so that they can copy files to and from their PC, if required.
- In addition to user names and passwords, each user is supplied with a keyring-sized SafeWord® security token that generates new passcodes to use every time they log on to our system; and we can provide a list of passcodes to log on with until the token is delivered or if it is misplaced
- Our support team is available during normal working hours (8:30 to 17:30, Monday to Friday) to resolve usage and connectivity problems, and each issue is allocated a unique ticket number for your reference
- We can quickly add other hosted Windows applications to any or all of your users' desktops on request - usually within one working day
- More products and/or users can be added to or subtracted from your monthly account as and when you require them
- Each desktop user account has an initial allowance of ½ GB of data storage for emails and ½ GB for files; so that a company with ten users, for example, will have a total allowance of 5GB for file storage and 5GB for email storage. Additional storage is charged per GB per month and is tallied up at the end of each month. You can minimise data storage costs by compressing files before or after you upload them to our servers, and archiving old email messages.
- Active Directory security groups can be set up in the shared drive at no extra charge so that different folders are accessible to different groups of users in the same organisation.
- Internal email distribution lists can be set up at no extra charge and shared email inboxes can be set up for a small monthly charge.