hosted desktops for the culture & entertainment industry

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The coronavirus pandemic has taken a hefty toll on all types of businesses, but perhaps the greatest impact has been on those within the culture and entertainment industry. With museums, art galleries and heritage sites closed for months and theatres and music venues having to wait even longer, business owners need to tighten their purse strings as much as possible whilst simultaneously providing staff with effective methods for working remotely.

If you work within this industry and don’t yet know about the benefits of hosted desktops, we’re here to explain how they can be installed across your business and why they’re so beneficial.

What are hosted desktops?

Every member of staff will use a computer desktop for some aspect of their role, with many accessing them throughout their working day. A hosted desktop presents a user’s familiar arrangement, with all of their files, folders, emails, software, data and shortcuts being exactly where they usually are. The key difference is that rather than being stored within a bulky server room that’s located on the premises, each desktop is hosted within our secure UK data centres. This can greatly reduce your ongoing costs associated with energy consumption, IT maintenance, hardware upgrades and software license fees from day one.

Everyone continues to work as normal without being able to tell the difference. Actually, that’s a lie, as there are multiple differences between a traditional desktop’s functionality and a GoCloud hosted desktop. Read on to discover what they are.

Access from anywhere 24/7

Whether it’s box office staff, events managers, theatre-makers, gallery curators, music technicians or any other roles within the culture and entertainment industry, everyone who works for your business can access their hosted desktop from any device any time they wish. This greatly improves productivity levels and enables staff to work from home as efficiently as they do in the workplace.

When multiple staff need to provide input on a single document, hosted desktops allow them to collaborate to maximum effect without the hassle of individual versions that need amalgamating into the core file. Thanks to the speed and reliability of hosted desktops, they can also get more work done within their weekly hours, all while knowing that server delays, downtime and errors have become a thing of the past. Imagine what your teams could achieve if their technology worked as hard as they do!

Enhance your marketing and communications

Activity within the culture and entertainment industry often requires a lot of specialists all working on the same project. A theatre show, for instance, has a writer, director, producer, actors, stage and production managers, and designers for the sound, set, costumes and lighting. Add to that the people organising the marketing, PR, sales and public engagement and you have yourself a large team that needs to stay in touch, all while having easy access to a multitude of files and data.

With hosted desktops, you can have as many individual users as you wish, all of which can communicate, collaborate, monitor and develop as much as they need to. They can work on company premises, from home, at other venues, whilst attending events and meetings and even on the move – digital accessibility has never been so powerful and straightforward.  

Engage with your audiences

Businesses that organise cultural activity and entertainment need to be constantly connected to the public, as well as stakeholders, funding bodies, third-party booking offices and potential investors. GoCloud hosted desktops make this possible 24/7 thanks to a fast connection and responsive experience.

With the ability to easily send emails, host video calls, update social media channels, access software and databases, share work and engage with audiences even outside of office hours, you’ll wonder how your business ever managed without a hosted desktop infrastructure.

Total security

From funding bids and budgets to payroll and customer information, you have a lot of confidential data. Traditional desktops and servers run the risk of data becoming lost, corrupted, damaged by malware and stolen by hackers. Hosted desktops are different, as our data centre is a highly sophisticated system with premium backup and security features, including:

• 256-bit encryption
• Market-leading antivirus software
• Two-factor authentication
• ISO 27001 certification
• An isolated Citrix/Windows environment that keeps all of your data on individual hardware
• All data is stored in one place, ensuring the highest level of GDPR compliance