The only constant in today’s business world is change, with the most agile businesses looking every way they can to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve their available resources. Terminal servers are the server components of Remote Desktop Services, enabling the creation of a virtualized environment that allows employees to remotely access the company’s central server for virtual desktops, applications, and data access. Remote Desktop Services are gaining popularity among businesses large and small. Massive companies such as Nintendo, Microsoft, and Wells Fargo have realized the many benefits terminal servers have to offer their organization.
The biggest benefit of RDS is the cost savings it brings to a business. You don’t have to buy full-fledged computers for each employee, outfitted with its own expensive software licenses. Instead, the workstation computers are thin clients connecting to the terminal servers to access a virtual desktop with all the software they need to do their job. The hardware and software costs are cut dramatically.
Another area seeing cost benefits is with IT support and maintenance costs. Instead of dealing with end users who tend to cause as much havoc on their system as the worst virus, they spend most of the time working on the servers. The IT budget also gets a big benefit from cutting down on deployment time, as software is only installed on the terminal servers and not throughout the entire organization. If you have software with a particularly frequent update schedule, applying patches on a small amount of servers instead of every workstation helps your IT staff stay on top of security patches and other essentials.
Creating a client - server infrastructure within your business creates a more efficient global workforce as well. Remote employees working from home or on business trips aren’t cut off from the resources the office has to offer. RDS allows the employees to remotely connect to the network and gain access to its resources, instead of forcing them to fly back to the main office. The RDS is no longer limited to a desktop-to-desktop platform as advanced services like the Ericom RDP Client for mobile iOS devices are set-up in the system, allowing employees to login to the network through their mobile.
Data security is a major concern across the board for businesses these days, so any measures that cut down on the potential for a security breach is a boon. By using terminal servers, access to essential files and programs are easily limited through user permissions. You have a few additional challenges associated with terminal servers when you allow remote access outside the office, but expanding your global workforce and telecommuting opportunities outweighs the extra measures you take.
The last major benefit businesses get from terminal servers is providing a seamless experience for the end user. They don’t know the difference between a full out workstation and a thin client, all they know is they have access to an operating system and applications that look like they are installed on the computer.
Terminal servers simply make sense from a cost, security, and development standpoint. The technology is used by small businesses to the big boys in the technology world, so it works well across a variety of organizations.
