IronOrbit Hosted Desktop Solutions are more cost-effective than an on-site IT infrastructure of PC desktops and servers. Critically, businesses don’t have to purchase any on-site servers or hire any on-premise IT personnel with IronOrbit Desktop Hosting. Downtime and data loss are also less likely to occur with our Hosted Desktop Solutions than on-site IT infrastructures.
Unfortunately, some businesses fail to consider these and other hidden costs of a PC-based infrastructure when evaluating their IT options. They only consider the fact that a PC has an upfront cost of x amount and that hardware lasts an average of three to five years, and then compare that to the monthly costs of y amount of an IronOrbit Hosted Desktop multiplied by between 36 and 60 (months) to get a total cost of z. The end result is that these businesses end up sticking with an on-site IT infrastructure because PCs are more familiar to them and there isn’t that much of a difference between x and z.
The value of x and z aren’t as similar if you consider the hidden costs of PCs, however:
- Server costs. A server is a necessary component of any on-site IT infrastructure. It provides authorized employees with access to business-critical files and applications. Unfortunately for businesses with on-site IT infrastructures, servers are also expensive to purchase and maintain. Each server will add several thousand dollars to the costs of a PC-based infrastructure. Meanwhile, we already include the costs of purchasing and maintaining our servers in our hosted desktops’ flat, monthly subscription rate.
- Maintenance costs. Most PCs need to be repaired or have a part replaced at some point during their lifecycle. Someone needs to be hired to take care of these repairs—either a $100/hour freelance IT repairman or a $50,000/year on-site IT specialist. IronOrbit Hosted Desktops, on the other hand, never have to be repaired, and our clients don’t have to repair or replace their end-user devices (desktops, laptops, thin clients, smartphones, or tablets) as much or as soon as they normally would because our servers handle 100% of the processing and storage requirements of our hosted desktops.
- Downtime and data loss. For every minute of unplanned infrastructure downtime, businesses lose $5,000. A single data breach incident costs businesses an average of $5.4 million.
Most on-site IT infrastructures are less secure and reliable than Ironorbit Hosted Desktops. We monitor our Hosted Desktops 24x7x365; secure them with firewalls, IPS/IDS, antivirus, SPAM blocker, and a content filter; and back them up daily. It’s beyond the IT budget of most companies to provide this level of protection for an on-site infrastructure. In any case, PCs are more decentralized than hosted desktops, and have to be secured and managed individually—a more costly and less effective form of oversight.
To reduce your IT costs and eliminate the hassles of IT infrastructure management, sign up for IronOrbit Desktop Hosting today. For more information on this subject, visit our hosted desktop pricing page or our hosted desktop costs page, or reach out to a helpful IronOrbit sales representative at [email protected] or (888) 753-5060.