Yes – we support connections from Apple Macs/Macbooks and there are three methods of connecting from these devices:

• Remote Desktop – connect to the full remote desktop to access all your installed Windows applications with a familiar Windows 10 style desktop.
• Remote Resources – Connect to published applications which are then streamed to your Mac. They look and feel just as if they are running on the Mac but are of course running remotely.
• Remote Desktop Web Client. Connect to published applications through the Safari browser on the Mac/Macbook to run any Windows application inside a browser.

Yes – Using the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client, available from the app store, you can connect using either of these two methods:

• Remote Desktop – connect to the full remote desktop to access all your installed Windows applications with a familiar Windows 10 style desktop.
• Remote Resources – Connect to published applications which are then streamed to your Mac. They look and feel just as if they are running on the Mav but are of course running remotely.

Yes – Using the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client, available from Google Play, you can connect using either of these two methods:

• Remote Desktop – connect to the full remote desktop to access all your installed Windows applications with a familiar Windows 10 style desktop.
• Remote Resources – Connect to published applications which are then streamed to your Mac. They look and feel just as if they are running on the Mac but are of course running remotely.

We will always aim to beat or match any like for like quotation but it is important to check we are comparing apples with apples.   Send us the competing quote and we can take a look.

We are consistently the best value provider in this market so if someone is claiming they can do it cheaper then here is a list of things that you will definitely need to have so you can check to make sure they include them:

• All Microsoft licences. To use a remote desktop service you need both Windows Client Access Licences (CALs) and Remote Desktop CALs.  Make sure these are included.
• Fully managed service. Will the provider support all aspects of the remote desktop server including looking after Windows Updates, fixing the server if anything goes wrong, monitoring to catch issues before they happen?
• What support do they offer? Your Office Anywhere have a 24/7 telephone service for critical issues.
• What’s their reputation like, check online reviews such as Google Reviews or Trustpilot, ask for references for similar customers/projects.
• Make sure the provider is including managed antivirus on the remote desktop server.
• Make sure all data is backed up off site as part of the price, and retained for several weeks so you can do point of time restores.  Check the provider can also offer additional third party backups as you may need this for compliance.
• Make sure you’re not just renting one physical server.   The hosted desktops at Your Office Anywhere can fail over to other servers in the event of a hardware failure.
• Make sure you have an uptime guarantee of at least 99.5%
• Many hosted desktop providers say “Our ISO 27001 certified data centre” which means they are just piggy backing onto the ISO certification that their data centre provider has, and may not be ISO accredited themselves.   At Your Office Anywhere both ourselves and the data centre we use are certified for ISO 27001 for our Information Security Management System.
• How competent are the providers technical team, will they know what to do if your server throws a wobbly after a dodgy Windows update?

Not particularly, hosted desktops are designed to run on low bandwidths.  They will work even as slow as 0.5 – 1mbps download but we’d recommend 2mbps or higher to get a really good experience.  Companies struggling to use services like Sage Drive (Sage Remote Data Access) because of poor quality broadband will find running Sage on hosted desktops will solve any stability and data corruption issues.

Any internet-based system may be affected by other things using your broadband.  For example, someone else on the network watching streaming video or uploading large files such as photos.

A reliable broadband connection will give you the best experience.  However, an intermittent connection can still be used, for example if you are working on a train.   If your internet connection cuts out the remote desktop will sit and wait until you reconnect again, so there’s very little risk of data corruption using hosted desktops on an intermittent connection compared with other online systems.   Companies struggling to use services like Sage Drive (Sage Remote Data Access) because of poor quality broadband will find running Sage on hosted desktops will solve any stability and data corruption issues.

No, with hosted desktops all the processing is done by the hosted remote desktop server in our data centre, very little effort is required by the PC or other device.  As a suggestion a 4GB RAM and 2 CPU cores PC will be more than enough.

There’s theoretically no limit, the solution can scale for as many users as you need.  The limitations would only be within the applications themselves.

If you do have a large user base then speak with our sales consultants so we can design the optimum architecture for your requirements and look at concurrent user pricing to keep costs down.

While Windows Virtual Desktops and Cloud PCs use similar architecture to hosted desktops, and on face value are similarly priced, the fundamental difference is that hosted desktops are a fully managed service.  With Azure systems you either need IT skills within your business or pay an external IT provider to setup configure and support them.    The setup costs for Azure will be significant.   This will make Azure far more expensive overall.   With hosted desktops from Your Office Anywhere everything is included in the price; all the support, maintenance, antivirus, backups, monitoring and alerting, everything.  There is a token setup cost of £125 per server and for 99% of customers they will only need one server as all the other roles required for remote desktops are already in place and included in the price.   There are no hidden costs and there is also cost consistency, you know what you will be paying month by month.  Something that isn’t the case with Azure.

The simple answer is: “as much as you need/want”.  The servers are totally scalable so there should be no need to suffer poor performance.  How much is included depends on what you are hosting.  If you’re hosting common desktop applications like Sage, Microsoft Office, or Microsoft Access databases then we will make sure you have sufficient RAM and CPU cores for all your users to have the optimal experience.

If you’re hosting browser-based applications, bespoke, or you want to run lots of applications, but perhaps not all at once, then we will work with you to find the optimum amount of resource that gives you great performance and is cost effective.   With browser-based apps running on a hosted desktop the amount of resource needed depends on many factors including the number of browser windows open at once, the number of tabs open, number and type of browser extensions, and ultimately the web applications running.

Of course, if you want it to, we can scale servers to your specific requirements.   Even better we can spec the server to meet what you actually need, not what the software vendor thinks you will need.   Software vendors will typically specify the highest spec you could possibly need if you went out and purchased a physical server, after all you don’t want to have to replace it too soon as your requirements grow.   With hosted remote desktop servers, we can increase RAM (Memory) on the fly as your company and data grows, add additional CPU cores, add more disk, and most importantly we don’t need to rent any more than you actually need so helping you keep costs to a minimum.

Yes, however, you will need to be licenced for one of the Enterprise plans that include the Shared Computer Activation feature.  The plans that can be used are:

Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise

Office 365 E3 or E5

The contract term is just monthly.  We take great pride in our customer service and customers stay with us because they want to, not because we tie them into a contract.   We invoice in advance and customers can cancel at any point up to the morning of the last day of the month.

Yes, we have several options for customers who want to make sure what they are signing up to is the right solution.

• Demo Account – we have a demo server with Sage Accounts, Access databases, and Microsoft Office installed. This will give a very good feel for how these applications would work on a customer’s own remote desktop server if they signed up, and would also give an impression how other applications may work.
• Test Server – customers who have bespoke applications, or custom Access databases may want to try them out first on a test server to make sure they work before signing up.
• Get it working guarantee – Some applications are quite complex in their architecture and require some skills and experience to set up. In some cases, a customer may pay a software vendor to move a system to our platform.  Running this on a test server may be impractical or expensive, but customers may not want to take the risk that it doesn’t work.  So, we take on that risk and in certain circumstances can offer guarantees that applications will work or the customer can cancel without owing a penny.

Almost definitely not.  A Virtual Private Server is “just” a server, nothing else.  To run applications remotely for more than one user then you’re going to need to install and configure a whole bunch of other servers and services.  On top of that you will need to pay for various Microsoft licences, backups, antivirus and most importantly be able to support the environment.   A Hosted desktop with Your Office Anywhere is a fully managed service with everything that you need included.

Generally not, depending on the number of users, an on-premise server can be a much more expensive solution that hosted desktops.   The electricity costs alone could be well over £2,500 a year.  When you factor in licence costs, installation and setup costs, upgrade costs, day to day support and maintenance, backups, and antivirus then the cost of the on-premise server will be much more expensive, especially for smaller businesses.  You then need to factor in risks and cost of downtime if your on-premise server has a hardware fault or ransomware.

We consistently get 5 star reviews by our customers on Google Reviews.

Some customers buy us Christmas presents but that isn’t obligatory.

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Prior to providing hosted services we were a Microsoft Gold Partner IT consultancy specialising in (amongst other things) remote desktop solutions for many blue-chip companies since the late 90s.   Cardium Outsourcing has been trading since 2005, we are one of the longest established cloud hosting companies, and have been providing cloud services longer than companies like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.

All our servers are kept in commercial data centres in the UK.  Our primary data centre is in Manchester.

Rather than make claims about our level of security we have opted to be certified for ISO 27001 for our Information Security management system.  This means that we are audited annually to ensure we have robust information security policies and procedures and that we follow them.

The data centre is certified as Tier 3 which is standard for most cloud and web services.  The tiers go from Tier 1 which is the lowest to Tier 5 which would be military grade with armed guards.

Besides locked doors and bars on the windows the data centre has 24-hour security guards.   Entry to the building is by authorised personnel only.   Our technical team can only gain entry by calling and booking in advance from pre-registered phones.   Once in the building key card security is used to secure access to the server rooms themselves.  Once in the server room the racks containing our servers and storage are secured by combination locks preventing the data centre staff accessing our equipment.

There isn’t a GDPR certification as such, put very simply it is the law and we are very keen to comply with it.   However, as part of our ISO 27001 certification we are obliged to comply with all data protection legislation so sticking to GDPR is something we are audited on for compliance.

99% of hacking attacks are actually very simple, generally all the hacker needs to do is get your username and password.  Hackers will use various methods to get this information, the most common being phishing emails or keystroke logging malware on your local PC.   If you allow a hacker to get your username and password then it is impossible to stop them hacking in without additional security measures.

The best option is to add Multi-Factor Authentication to your account.  This requires an additional authentication step such as approving the logon using an app on your smartphone or receiving a landline call with a one-time pin number.  That way even if a hacker does get hold of your password it is useless to him without your phone.  Plus, you will be alerted that someone is logging in as you giving you chance to change your password.

All data passing across the internet is encrypted using https minimum 2048bit encryption.

Data at rest is not encrypted by default, but can be on request.   There are practical reasons why some customers do not want their servers encrypted so we leave this for individual customers to decide. 

No, we don’t undertake to offer a 100% error free services.   As we are providing a Microsoft Windows Server based solution we are very reliant upon Microsoft as a third party for the reliability of their software.   In fairness Microsoft systems are a lot more reliable than say 20 years ago, but there is still a very real risk of servers not restarting properly after a Windows update, requiring a manual reboot, or in the very worst-case blue screening which may require rolling back the update till Microsoft provide a patch.   We have monitoring and alerting systems in place so will probably know before our customers if a server hasn’t restarted properly.

What customers can be reassured about is that any issue affecting their servers will be quickly and professionally dealt with by our technical team meaning that in reality any down time is incredibly rare and resolved very quickly.

All customer servers are virtual servers in a “Hyper-V Cluster” this means that several physical servers run many virtual servers.  In the event of a hardware fault with a physical “host” server a customer’s virtual server “guest” will instantly move to a new physical host.

All disk drives are in fault tolerant RAID arrays so that no data is lost and systems continue to function in the event of a disk failure.

The data centre has multiple power feeds into it from the grid, and then diesel generators which kick in instantly if there is a power cut affecting both feeds.  The diesel generators could continue to supply power indefinitely.

All servers are connected to uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). These are big batteries which can continue supplying the correct current to servers in the event of a short power cut.  These bridge the gap between power failing and diesel generators starting.

There are multiple internet feeds into the data centre, at least three.

We have an optional solution of a additional, third-party, cloud backup system which would give customers access to their raw data in the unlikely event of a local issue affecting connectivity to our servers.

First thing to say is that we are a long standing and profitable business.  Don’t take my word for it, do a credit check in Experian.   However, we recognise that many businesses need to ask this question as part of their own compliance duties.

Where this is a concern we offer a third-party cloud backup solution where your data would have a second backup to another data centre in another part of the country. Customers would be able to restore that data to their own devices without needing our involvement.  Contact your sales consultant for details.

If the company were to cease trading it would be the responsibility of the administrators to ensure all data was returned to customers.