Move any desktop application to cloud – Desk to Cloud

Macrosoft introduces a new solution that enables a business to simply host its desktop applications to the Cloud and, in the process, fully utilize all that cloud technology has to offer, all without converting or rewriting application codes.

Desk to Cloud uses AWS AppStream 2.0 technology to install and maintain the desktop app in the Cloud. Our trained team utilizes a well-defined process methodology to perform the migration.  It is easy, straightforward, and inexpensive to accomplish in a short time frame. This can afford a company the ability to continue to use its desktop application in a much more efficient and highly secure environment, thereby extending the desktop application’s life for years to come.

This new tool offers a new and innovative way for companies to proceed forward with their desktop apps, at least for an interim period, rather than going directly to a full migration of the application to a new modern framework such as .NET.¹ . Desk to Cloud is a useful and relevant interim step to gain significant improvements in computing efficiency, security, and IT maintenance simplification and cost reduction.

High-Level Benefits of Desk to Cloud

In a nutshell, here are the eight high-level benefits that Desk to Cloud  offers:

1. It provides a smooth, high-quality automated process to move your current desktop application to the Cloud
2. Only minor changes are required to the desktop application to allow it to take full advantage of being in the Cloud desktop application. 
3. Once the application is in Cloud, you get the full cloud benefits
4. Using Desk to Cloud, the user has the choice of Cloud environments: AWS
5. The Desk to Cloud  process can work with a wide variety of desktop apps, including: Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro, Microsoft Access, C++, Visual dBase, Clipper, Delphi, etc.
6. There is zero downtime of the app required during the migration process
7. The migration can be accomplished in weeks instead of months
8. And perhaps most importantly, you can be assured there will be no more security compliance issues

Macrosoft provides the best desktop application to cloud services and that’s why we designed Desk to Cloud to accomplish all eight of these significant benefits. Many companies believe this to be a winning set of benefits. It should pave the way for moving many of their desktop apps (which are often vital components of a company’s IT infrastructure) to the Cloud. On the Cloud, these apps become much more efficient, easier to maintain and upgrade, and more secure.

Challenges with a Desktop Application

The fundamental problem with a desktop application is that the app needs to be installed on each user’s desktop/laptop. With the emergence of a much greater degree of remote user work expected to continue into the foreseeable future, this desktop compounds the strategic problem with desktop apps: they restrict and slow down digital transformation to the secure Cloud environment that most companies are moving aggressively toward.

In addition, in terms of practical IT challenges and inefficiencies faced with desktop apps, can distill these primary challenges of desktop apps to the following five high-level points.

1. Remote user support is IT resource-intensive and hard to automate fully
2. The same applies to New Release Launches/Updates
3. New User Setup and Installation is difficult, given the increasingly varied nature of user platforms
4. Database connections are hard to establish and make fully secure; moreover, multiple process inefficiencies afflict the app and its connections
5. And finally, in my view, the most crucial issue – is security since the application is likely running on a myriad of local remote machines

Benefits of Having the Desktop App in the Cloud

Below is a list of the major benefits of having the desktop app in the Cloud. These address each of the five problems and challenges with desktop apps noted in an earlier section.

1. High Availability and Scalability.

This applies to every user, no matter the scale of the user base.

2. Small Footprint – Using Browser

The desktop app is no longer resident on each user’s desktop, and essentially all the computing power is now employed on the Cloud and running the apps from the browser.

3. Maintenance and Upgrades

All maintenance and upgrades are done centrally and uploaded to the Cloud in one-time events. No more of the hassles associated with each desktop needing to upload any new application version.

4. Security

There is clearly a tremendous improvement in security levels for the application being in AWS Cloud rather than on large numbers of desktop computers. Within the AWS Cloud environment, there are numerous free security tools, including:

• Network Security Groups
• Network ACL’s
• Cloud Watch
• AWS KMS Integration (Volume Encryption)
• Captcha Prompt

5. Single Sign-on

This can be handled centrally so that all desktop application users can employ a single sign-on capability (with MFA) to use this app once it is in the Cloud. This can be a significant productivity improvement for users using this app multiple times during a typical day’s work.

6. Easy Backups

Finally, it is important to note that now all the data from all individual users can be backed up automatically on a regular basis since it is all resident in the Cloud instance, so there are no more of the hassles and potential losses of data with users not backing up properly or regularly.