Shift to home working exposes virtual app opportunity

The coronavirus has caused many businesses to reflect on their strategies and re-evaluate their technology choices.

One of the key areas has been around desktop virtualisation, which has been seen by many as an answer to questions posed around providing staff with secure environments to access corporate applications.

But there is a portion of the workforce that has had to scramble to use home devices and try to use those to continue to be productive in a secure way. That audience has been in the sights of several vendors that have a solution their channel partners can take to market.

“One of the situations we saw when Covid-19 hit was that workers were sent home, but they do not have company-issued laptops as they work on desktops in the office, and they were asked to work on whatever device they happen to have at home,” said Robb Henshaw, chief marketing officer at Cameyo.

The vendor’s digital workplace platform enables people to access any legacy Windows/PC application on any device, regardless of OS, through virtual application delivery.

“There are a lot of different approaches to digital workspaces. There’s virtual desktops, which are very heavy and hard to manage and expensive. There are some cases where a full virtual desktop environment makes sense and is necessary, but for the vast majority of people, just the ability to access their critical business applications is what’s needed right now,” he added.

With many customers showing a preference for sticking with a hybrid working approach, giving staff the opportunity to work at home two or three days a week going forward, the desktop management pitch is clearly going to remain an important one for the channel.

“The fundamental nature of work is changed at this point. A a lot of people won’t ever go back to an office, while a lot of people will, but they won’t go full-time, just a couple of days a week. In both cases, there will be times you are out of the office and you need access to your stuff. The channel has this opportunity now to solve an immediate problem, but to do so in a way that is sustainable for the long term,” he said.

Henshaw said Cameyo was looking at ramping up its indirect business to gain more opportunities to reach a wider customer base.

“Today, about 30% of our revenue comes through the channel. We have 15 reseller and distributor partners worldwide and we are getting ready [to build on that base],” he said.

“Those organisations that don’t have the resources to put into a full virtual desktop environment – and a lot of them rely on MSPs and reseller partners – are desperately trying to find a solution that they can roll out to organisations that don’t have the internal resources to manage all of this,” he added. “It is about helping the channel have a deeper portfolio of solutions for a wider variety of organisations.”