Product review ADS Portal OnlineDesktop
From Network Computing Magazine Vol 16 No 03- May/June 2007
Hosted desktop services are proving a popular choice not only for SMBs with limited software budgets and on-site support, but also companies that don’t want to be left behind in the move to embrace mobile working. ADS Portal takes this to the next level as its OnlineDesktop offers a simple pay-as-you-go service that can remotely host just about any application you choose. You kick off with the Windows Desktop and basic applications such as Internet Explorer and the starting price for each user includes 500MB of remote storage and full web content filtering. You call the shots now as to what business applications you want the service to host for you with MS Office Standard 2007 adding an extra £11.50 per user per month. If you want Outlook Exchange email services, this adds a further £10 a month but it also includes 300MB of message storage and full anti-spam and anti-virus scanning; security services that many small businesses simply can’t afford to implement locally. If you choose to store all your business critical data on the remote servers, you’ll also get the benefit of enterprise level backup and data recovery services which are included in the base price. 
A critical factor is continuity as your business operations are now reliant on having the hosted services available whenever you want them. The primary site is protected with good physical security as the building has perimeter alarms and key card access on all entrances. CCTV coverage is provided on all main areas along with 24-hour recording facilities and the latest smoke detection systems are installed as well. There’s much more as the data centre uses multiple service providers for its connections to the Internet backbone and even if power is denied, the building has backup generators immediately available. ADS Portal also enters into SLAs (service level agreements) with all customers, which it claims is unique. If they suffer any downtime, then they make service time credits, calculated on a sliding scale. OnlineDesktop uses the standard Citrix Presentation Server to provide thin client services to users. It’s simple enough to use, as you point a browser at the log-in portal, provide your account details and decide which ICA client you want to use. For the latter, the recommended path is to download the standard client, but you can opt for an ActiveX control or Java app instead. Access security is tight, as along with a username and password you are provided with a SafeWord token which generates one-time passwords for each session. For testing we were a supplied with MS Office 2007 and Exchange services which we found easy enough to access. Performance will, of course, depend on the size of your Internet pipeline but we found response times in most cases were close to that of a local PC. Local drives can be mapped into the environment and you can decide on whether to allow read or read-write access to them. However, be careful when opening large local files as we found even a 3MB PowerPoint presentation could take over 30 seconds to load. A key feature of OnlineDesktop is that you can keep costs down by ensuring you purchase only what you need and it’s flexible enough that you can add and remove users on an ongoing basis and modify the services requested. Recent research by Microsoft concluded that companies failing to address the needs of mobile workers could face losing out to the competition. Hosted services are one of the simplest solutions to this issue and OnlineDesktop provides an extensive, well-priced range of facilities that can be easily customised to suit individual businesses needs. Product: OnlineDesktop
Supplier: ADS Portal
Telephone: 08700 671 671
Web site: www.adsportal.net
Price: From £85.50 per month excluding VAT | 
