Category Archives: Business

Business

Why Your Small Business Needs Its Own Phone Number

Did you know that 88% of customers report that they call a business directly after doing an online search for a product or service? No matter how technologically connected your business is, having a business phone number is consistently cited as the best way for customers and suppliers to reach you, for placing outgoing calls with your business caller ID, and for managing multiple phone lines inside your company. A separate business line or virtual number also offers professional calling features that are unavailable to individuals, but those are just a few of the reasons why your small business needs its own phone number.


Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use Your Personal Phone Number for Business

Many start-ups and entrepreneurs only consider adding a separate phone number after the business has grown beyond the initial phase. Often, they will use their personal phone number (or numbers, in the case of co-founders, or start-ups with employees), since it seems like a convenient and affordable option when the business is in early stages. However, this can create a number of problems and limitations down the road when it comes time to expand the business and its brand.

Using your personal number for business exposes you to all kinds of communications on your personal line that you might not be ready for. Customers and suppliers will contact you outside of business hours, telemarketers and robocallers will harass you to no end, and any business materials you publish your personal number on will be useless if you change your number later. Other reasons not to use your personal number include:

  • No professional calling features
  • Lack of control over other lines
  • Compromised personal privacy
  • No distinguishing personal vs. business calls
  • Unable to pass control to a workmate
  • Using your personal number looks unprofessional

The list goes on, but thankfully, getting your business its own phone number can instantly remedy most of those problems.

Advantages of Getting Your Own Small Business Phone Number

There is a long list of benefits to getting a separate business number, but it’s worth focusing on a few key points that provide across-the-board benefits for any entrepreneur:

Improve customer experience

An exclusive business phone number works to enhance the customer experience and improve customer satisfaction. It can be frustrating when you’re trying to get in touch with a company and are unable to for any reason, so having a business number makes it easy for customers and suppliers to reach you when they need to.

Reliability, portability, and scalability

Having a business phone number will provide the kind of reliability and peace of mind that you need to focus on growing your business. A dedicated line means a dedicated service for your business that you can always count on. You can easily move that number to another location if you need to, forward your calls, or take it with you on the go. Using a professional business phone system also lets you scale your business easily, adding departments and extensions as you need them.

Keep business and personal communications separate

If you use your personal number for business, it can be difficult to distinguish between personal and business calls, texts, and voicemails, complicating your efforts to communicate with customers and suppliers, as well as friends and family. What’s more, if you change your personal number, all your promotional materials, including business cards, company letterheads, and marketing communications will be rendered useless.

With a separate business number, you can keep your personal contacts and communications separate, and even change your number without impacting your business.

Choose a business phone number that’s convenient and easy to remember

With a virtual business phone system, you can choose a number that’s easy for customers to remember, from any area code across the U.S. and Canada. You can even choose between local and toll-free numbers, or add extra numbers to your plan to increase the convenience of your callers in different area codes.

Control how your business communicates

Allowing everyone at your company to use their personal number for communicating with clients and suppliers means giving up control over that part of business operations. You need to be able to keep an eye on your company’s activities, whether logistics, sales, or customer service, and know who your employees are speaking to and when. With a business phone system, you will be able to maintain visibility into all your company’s phone communications.

Easier to maintain work-life balance

Giving out your personal number for business activities risks having your personal and professional lives becoming inextricably mixed. You will always be accessible to your customers, even if you’re supposed to be outside of work hours. Personal privacy can be compromised, opening you up to all kinds of unwelcome communications at any hour of the day or night. Maintain a healthy work-life balance by keeping a separate business number with controllable features for when and how your business line rings.

Benefits of Getting A Virtual Business Phone Number

A business phone number improves and simplifies the calling experience for business owners and their customers. Callers will hear a professional pre-recorded greeting and be presented with call options to help them get the service they need quickly. Your business phone or virtual phone number will ring separately from your personal line, making it easy to distinguish between types of calls.

If you opt to use a virtual phone number on your current smartphone or device(s) instead of a traditional business line, you also get a variety of advantages that traditional plans are unable to offer, or limited in their capacity to provide, such as:

  • A separate work phone number on your current phone, no need to purchase or install additional expensive equipment
  • Local or toll-free numbers from any area code in the U.S. or Canada
  • Business caller ID to keep your personal number private
  • Easily distinguish between incoming personal and business calls and messages
  • Keep business communications and contacts separate from personal
  • AI-powered voicemail transcription when you can’t listen to messages
  • Option to set business hours to receive calls only when you choose
  • Add additional lines and extensions for free, or expand your plan when your business scales up
  • Track conversations with clients and suppliers across your company
  • Call menu options, departments, extensions, and voicemail boxes for a professional calling experience

Virtual Numbers Help Teams and Businesses Achieve Success

Being able to work together as a team is critical for any business to achieve its goals. Employees consistently rate teamwork and collaboration as very important when working together at a company, and we all know that working well with our colleagues is essential not just for getting the job done, but for overall happiness and satisfaction in our work lives. But collaboration can be difficult, especially when your company grows, adding branches and diverse teams throughout a larger organization.

Keeping everyone in touch and having one central point of contact for customers and service providers is just one of the reasons why your small business needs its own phone number. Adding a virtual business phone number offers a myriad of other benefits, including professional call options, extensions for every individual and department, and shared contacts that your organization can use to keep everyone on the same page about where your business is at today, and where you are headed in the future.

Business

How to create digital presence for businesses

Establishing a strong digital presence for businesses is crucial in today’s technologically advanced world. To create an effective digital presence, businesses should start by developing a comprehensive website that showcases their products or services. This website should be visually appealing, user-friendly, and optimized for search engines to ensure maximum visibility.

Discover the ultimate guide to establishing a powerful digital presence for businesses.

Additionally, businesses should leverage social media platforms to engage with their target audience and build brand awareness. By regularly posting relevant and engaging content, responding to customer inquiries, and participating in industry discussions, businesses can establish themselves as industry leaders and attract a loyal customer base.

Furthermore, investing in online advertising and search engine optimization can help drive traffic to the website and increase online visibility. By implementing these strategies, businesses can create a strong digital presence that enhances their brand image and drives growth.

Technological advances happen to be crucial and essential; however, today, technology has become an intrinsic means to deal with a plethora of challenges posed by the continuing international outbreak. Coronavirus has closed down the business just as before, and it’s directed lots of smaller organizations worried and unsure of just how to maintain their partnerships afloat and survive the subsequent economic downturn.

Purchase a domain

It will tell those you have and what exactly you need to give at a glimpse, direct them to a website, and help safeguard and promote your brand. A domain is the region of the site address, which employs www in the URL address bar at the very top of the web page. A domain name may also anchor a professional email with the same name as the domain for a company.

Select a website name that reflects your organization and is simple to consider. Keep it short and simple to type. Make an effort to use words that people could input while looking for the kind of business. Employing a business or geo-specific domain extension may be a solid fit for the industry. For example, Indian organizations may use .in or even .co. Directly into allure to local clients and signify their joyful Indian nationality.

Plan your Website

After registering and choosing your domain, the following thing is to organize your organization site. Would you like your site to showcase your organization and reveal your product/services, or else would you like to promote your services and products on the web to permit individuals to purchase from the site directly?

To construct an e-commerce site, you ought to make sure you’re all set to take care of inventory, payment processing, and shipping systems, customer assistance, some of the other factors to get a thriving webshop. You can select a simple DIY website builder tool that features e-commerce. Or you could look at hiring a qualified website designer, even when you’ve got a concept for the internet site but do not desire to build yourself.

Create informative content

Discuss your story and then deliver a personal touch for your website with the addition of descriptive and exciting content. You’re able to chat about your assignment, your fire, and also what exactly makes you stand apart from the contest.

Build a Social Networking existence

Using a prosperous internet business goes beyond building an internet site. It’s every bit as vital for a company to get in touch with clients on societal networking platforms. Social networking provides you with the possibility to share with you invaluable info regarding your small business and participate with existing and possible clients in real-time. Adding a connection back to your internet site in interesting social places might help generate traffic for your site and help grow your enterprise.

Drive website traffic

While interpersonal media marketing may be among those techniques to drive visitors to your site, you’ll find many different ways of assist in traffic to your organization site. Look at creating search-worthy and persuasive articles that people can’t find anyplace, including info-graphics, exciting videos, and enlightening website articles. Sending branded messages and emails to your visitors with a call to action leading straight to your internet site may also help in forcing visitors to your site. On the web adverts,” sponsored” articles and other paid solutions may be thought to help drive traffic.

Examine every statistics and improve

The job will not visit simply establishing a website, boosting the business enterprise on societal networking, and managing traffic. Consistently updating your website along with relevant content may also help improve your search engine visibility.

Keep it fresh using consistent site posts, up to date videos and photos, new services and products, and design improvements that reveal evolving trends. As a new site operator, it’s also wise to analyze and evaluate what’s working and what may be improved.

Business

How Does Buy Now Pay Later Works & Is It a Good Idea?

BNPL (buy now, pay later) applications are the hottest new way to, yeah, buy now pay later. They offer you the option of paying for your purchase in monthly instalments, always “interest-free.” According to a new BNPL survey conducted by The Ascent, more than one-third of U.S. customers have used a BNPL service, a figure that has grown dramatically in recent years.

Unfortunately, only about one-fifth of users who use these applications grasp how they function, according to the report. Unexpected payments and credit loss may result from a lack of understanding. All you need to talk on how buy now pay later applications operate is right here.

What are BNPL (buy now pay later) applications and how do they work?

Buy now, pay later applications let you make online purchases and pay for them in weekly, biweekly, or monthly increments. These applications, including credit cards, which bill interest, but they may also deliver “interest-free” periods. You will stop paying interest entirely if you pay off the balance before the term expires. BNPL interest rates are usually very high on a daily basis.

Most online stores have them on their checkout pages. A traditional BNPL interest-free deal would divide a transaction into four equivalent instalments, the first of which is charged at checkout and the remaining three every two weeks.

For example, if you’re buying anything for $200, you might see a BNPL payment option that allows you to pay in four $50 interest-free instalments. You’ll pay $50 today and get your piece, then $50 every two weeks for the next six weeks. If you don’t make your contributions on time or don’t pay off your debt until the interest-free period expires, you will be charged significant late fees and interest.

Is it true that buying now and paying later has an effect on my credit score?

BNPL is unlikely to increase your credit, but it can lessen it. The majority of BNPL applications do not perform a hard pull on your credit sheet, and many do not report on-time transfers to the credit bureaus. As a result, depending on the app, making all of your payments on time would have little effect on your credit score or even appear on your credit report.

Few BNPL applications, however, do announce late payments. In addition, if you miss a payment, most BNPL applications will cancel your account and insist that the outstanding balance be charged in full right away. If you don’t pay, your loan will be submitted to collections, which will negatively affect your credit score.

For others, the lack of opportunities to create credit may be a drawback, but others, especially those with bad credit, may benefit from the BNPL apps’ more lenient credit acceptance.

Is it a smart idea to pay for online orders using a BNPL app?

BNPL services, on the whole, deliver decent discounts — as long as you pay your balance off on time. When using BNPL software, there are a few things to keep in mind. Overall, they’ve created a versatile and easy way to pay for your online purchases.

Benefits of BNPL Apps

There will be no hard credit check: When you open an account with BNPL, you won’t be subjected to a hard credit search in most cases, but not all. It’s a smart idea to keep the amount of new requests on your credit report to a minimum, since too many will hurt your credit score. Any BNPL applications do a soft pull on your account (which has no effect on your score) as part of the acceptance process, but they’re mostly easier to get than a credit card.

Interest-free periods: BNPL will be a decent deal if you take advantage of an interest-free bonus to pay off the debt on time. You’ll be able to get the order straight away and pay for it over time without incurring any interest charges.

Effortless and convenient: The benefits of using BNPL applications are undeniable. They don’t necessitate any more applications or wait times. Many online stores have payment mechanisms built in, so it’s just as simple as entering your credit card details.

Disadvantages of BNPL services:

Late fees: You’ll almost certainly have to pay late fees if you fail to make a deposit or don’t have enough funds in your associated bank account. Many of these fees are fair flat-rate payments similar to those charged by credit cards, but they will stack up with time, so paying on time is the only way to minimise additional costs. Deferred interest ads on BNPL applications can also be avoided. If you don’t pay off the balance in full until the discount time expires, you’ll be charged interest from the initial sales date, which can be very costly.

High interest rates: BNPL apps sometimes have interest-free loans, but only for a short period. Any BNPL applications will start charging interest if you do not make the purchases according to the arrangement or if you are unable to pay off the order in full before the interest-free time expires. BNPL apps’ daily interest rates can be much higher than credit card interest rates.

Small credit limits: Some BNPL applications are designed for sales of a few hundred dollars, while others can reach several thousand dollars. If you have solid credit and a steady pay check, you’ll be able to get a credit card with a higher credit cap. However, putting large transactions on a credit card isn’t a good option in the first place, since you’ll pay high interest rates and end up in debt for years.

Little to no credit creation: You won’t be able to create credit for BNPL applications and you won’t be able to get credit for making on-time payments. Since your charges aren’t posted to the credit bureaus in most situations, you won’t be able to develop a good credit background on these applications as you would for a credit card.

Using the BNPL alternative to its full potential

Aside from the ease and versatility that BNPL provides, this credit option will also help you create a better credit record if you keep your end of the bargain with the provider or retailer and pay your bills on time. Here are three steps to help you make responsible use of the BNPL option:

Keep a close eye on your BNPL purchases. Yes, you can conduct several BNPL transactions with various merchants or lenders, but keep track of the total amount invested. You know your financial situation, loan commitments, and other obligations, but be cautious and keep track of your BNPL transactions. Even if you stay under your permitted credit cap, overspending will make it impossible to repay your debts responsibly.

Choose the repayment period wisely. The repayment terms and tenures provided by buy now pay later services are extremely flexible. Depending on the tenure you choose, there could be additional fees. If you have an interest-free loan term, you will not be required to pay anything. You will be paid late fees if you do not make the payments by the due date. If you’re certain you’ll be able to pay off the whole balance as soon as the next pay check arrives. If you have made a large investment, though, you may want to try paying it off in instalments.

Do not miss your payments. Because a missed payment will result in a late fee which could have an effect on your credit profile, it is vital to exercise financial restraint when making your repayments, just as it is for all credit opportunities. To reap the rewards of a faithful customer, make sure you pay the BNPL sums due by the agreed-upon deadline. You may also set calendar notifications and warnings to keep track of your due dates and make proper payments before interest accrues.

Conclusion

To summarise, while BNPL is an attractive proposition for customers, it is critical not to get carried away with it. Maintain financial and credit discipline to make the most of this credit option. Make wise investments and use your money wisely.

Author Bio:

Allison Janney is a Sales & Marketing Manager at ChargeAfter. She would like to share content on Finance Industry like Point of Sales financing, Buy now Pay later, consumer financing & Ecommerce financing for valuable reader.

Business

What Is Flat Design and How Can It Help You Market Your Business?

What Is Flat Design?

When entrepreneurs and business owners analyze different design styles to gain inspiration, you have likely come across some flat designs during your research. This begs the question as to what exactly is flat design? Considering this design’s minimalist nature, it has become the go-to design style for many graphic designers and website developers.

Startup and large corporations view flat designs favorably and seek to incorporate this design due to their bright, clean, and concise 2D structures.  Flat design is also ideal for designers because their technique revolves around simple rules instead of utilizing strict principles. These simplistic options organically heighten the usability of the plan.

Understanding Flat Design

The misconception that arises from these designs is the notion that flat design is boring, especially concerning its simplicity. This notion is downright false. In fact, flat designs enable you to cleanse out and remove irrelevant clutter from your marketing visuals. This includes the back and front ends of your website.

The most prominent example of a flat design in action is the design style of Microsoft. They implemented a flat design for their Windows 8 interface. This was proven to be a fantastical return to popularity for the interface of Apple iOS. You can easily avail your flat design with the support of graphic design agencies who provide their services through their unlimited graphic design packages. You will need to subscribe to these packages to obtain professional experts overseeing your project.

Now that you are up to speed on the fact that many brands are emulating the flat design technique to represent their marketing design. We will enlighten you with everything you need to know about this technique.

Merits and Demerits of Flat Design in Marketing

If you are intrigued by the usage of flat designs, you need to understand their pros and cons respectively before you can adopt their techniques. Grasping these characteristics will allow you to make an easy decision pertaining to whether a flat design is an appropriate style for you.

Flat Design as A Trend

 

Merits: Flat design has become a widespread trend in the current era. The brands and businesses that have made use of flat design continue to experience popularity to this day. People, in general, find current trends appealing, which facilitates their gravitation to the flat design brands. This has led to graphic designers utilizing flat designs to share in that prevalence and ensure that the techniques are as effective as they are arresting.

Demerits: There are no promises concerning how long the relevance of flat design will be maintained. Because of its trendiness, it can lose popularity with the time passage at a quick pace. The absence of this consistency gives rise to new fads and trends surfacing and taking their place in the popularity competition very soon. To summarize this in two words: Change happens. So, your flat design enforcement should be more directed towards competing with your rivals rather than rendering it as your brand’s foundation. This could put you at risk of losing capital and customers alike.

Flat Design Offers A Simple Interface 

Merits: With respect to flat designs, users will find it more convenient to navigate your format. All the visual elements are positioned relatively close to each other, which enhances their expediency. There are sometimes arrows present to assist users in navigating the design, and the links can be found in flat buttons.  The easy use of flat design makes it a vibrant choice for many brands who hope to render their plans navigable.

Demerits: There is an absence of a definition in the flat design’s icons which can confuse a lot of users who have no idea how to operate with respect to this type of procedure. They might not be able to determine or decipher the purpose of each icon. This was seen in the case of Windows 8, where users had to take a considerable amount of time to have a clear picture of making the new interface functional.

Bright Colors in Flat Design

Merits: The bright colors in flat design cater to an optimistic and positive mood. If you have any clues about color psychology, you’d know that colors evoke different people’s emotions. The brighter the colors, the more joyful a feel it creates. This makes flat designs the better choice for designers as opposed to designs with darker colors.  

Demerits: The search for bright colors can be a challenging endeavor for many designers. If a design is dominant in bright colors entirely, it can be challenging to distinguish them from one another. It can also lead to complications in identifying the right combination in the process.

Typography 

Merits: The best aspect about flat designs is the fact that it is mired in simplicity. However, the selection of your fonts and correct typography is the most sensitive part of the design. It is appropriate to choose at least one or two fonts. Selecting any more than that will hinder your messaging. It is better to adopt simple fonts for your flat designs rather than ornamental ones. Decorative fonts are attractive, but they will be difficult to interpret for the average viewer.

Demerits: As mentioned before, typography is the most sensitive facet of your flat design. A single misstep will deter the effects of your arrangement and collapse its entire infrastructure as a whole. Fonts interconnect all the visual elements in a flat design, which is why choosing accurate typography carries a lot of risks and vulnerabilities. There is also less room for experimentation which makes it imperative that your font pick be sound and compatible

Flat Design Visuals

Merits: The visuals associated with flat designs are outright alluring. The visuals are simple yet gather momentum when all the lines, icons, fonts, and colors are amalgamated to form one cohesive unit.

Demerits: Despite the design’s attractiveness, many professionals do not see anything particularly standing out in flat designs due to their minimalist facet. The simplicity does not make a big splash on the kind of message you want to convey. A more standout concept would be better suited to replace such a standard choice of visuals

There are many layers when it comes to flat design, and while they may have their shortcomings, the pros outweigh the cons by a mile. The 2D conventional feature of the flat design is one of the most sought-after visual components produced by a myriad of graphic design enterprises. You can opt for their flat-rate graphic design services, making them not only accessible but also affordable. Just so long as you have the experience and the capability to conduct such a process yourself, you can execute your design with distinction. That said, this process is not to be taken lightly. If you take a casual approach to its materialization, you will be unable to receive the design’s desired effects. Proceed with caution and care, and you will have the perfect flat design for your business.

Author Bio:

Aman Khan Digital Content Producer for Designster. He develops and implements content strategies for Designster, along with aligning business goals with content marketing activities. He actively contributes articles related to digital and content marketing.

Business, Technology

How Hosted VDI Overcomes the Challenges of Traditional VDI

Companies always face different types of challenges in working from office premises. VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is a modern solution that fulfills the remote working requirements of a business. VDI creates a virtualized environment where the desktops are created on a central server setup kept at a particular location. Then, it is delivered to the end-user who may be operating from a different location.

Many companies deploy a VDI environment on the servers kept at office premises or an in-house location. This means that you own the server and are responsible for the maintenance, upgrading, and any IT glitches related to the virtual desktops.

Managing massive hardware and bulky servers on-premise requires a lot of time and substantial upfront investment. Hence, it was a challenge for any company to work on this type of model.

To overcome these challenges,  companies worldwide have set their eyes upon the cloud-hosted virtual desktop in which third-party providers offer entirely managed services. These cloud-hosted virtual desktops are also called hosted VDI, in which the servers are kept at the provider’s cloud network.

The hosted VDI market is expanding rapidly due to the plethora of benefits it offers. The latest reports reflect that the desktop virtualization market is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 10.6% over the forecast period (2021-2026).

Before proceeding to the challenges of traditional VDI and how hosted VDI has overcome them, let’s see few similarities between them.

Few Similarities Between Traditional VDI and Hosted VDI

Remote Working

In both of them, the employees can work from remote locations such as from their home’s comfort. This flexibility allows them to choose the desired time to work. It is the most appropriate in times of pandemic as you can work without compromising your safety.

Easy Provisioning

In the case of VDI, virtual desktops are provisioned instantly. As the desktops are virtual, it can be created and configured on the management portal. Moreover, you can create separate groups according to different departments and create identical desktops with ease.

Easy Access

Even after making a VDI environment or taking services from a provider, a particular team has to deliver work from the office. In that case, companies can adopt BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) where employees can bring their own devices like laptops, phones, or tablets to the office and work on them.

Scalability

Even if your workforce increases or decreases, it is easier to add or remove the number of desktops in no time. This enhanced scalability saves your expense as none of your virtual desktops are idle when not being used. However, it is a bit easy to do so in hosted VDI, but you can still do it in your on-premise VDI if you have a good IT team.

Now, let’s look deep inside the major benefits that hosted VDI offers over traditional VDI.

Hosted VDI vs. Traditional VDI

1. Reduced Infrastructure

Companies face a lot of challenges in setting up on-premise servers and maintaining dozens of desktops. It takes a lot of energy, time, and expense to set up, upgrade, and repair these servers regularly. Companies have to keep an in-house team of IT experts for resolving the technical glitches.

In setting up in-house VDI, companies need dedicated space to keep bulky servers for desktop deployment. Companies have to do intensive cabling and maintain an air-conditioned environment to avoid overheating to set this vast infra.

Hosted VDI services from the providers help you reduce on-premise hardware and make your work hassle-free. This is because virtual desktops are created on the remote servers of the hosted VDI provider.

Hence, you do not have to maintain an endless cycle of purchasing, maintaining, upgrading, and ultimately replacing old PCs. Moreover, as VDI on the cloud enables remote working, you don’t even need to create and handle LAN cabling in your office premises.

2. High Security

Physical security of your IT infra that may comprise your desktop, hardware device like thin clients, and storage devices like pen drives or hard disks, is of utmost importance. Desktops and hard drive storage devices could become a victim of theft.

In the case of traditional VDI, the physical servers kept at the office premises could also be hacked, and confidential data could be leaked amongst the employees. According to the data, companies have faced cyber threats and data breach problems many times due to which their crucial customer and client’s information gets leaked.

With hosted VDI, you get multiple options to secure your data, and as there is no on-premise data storage, you can sit free without worrying. There are various access control features like Single Sign-on (SSO), 2-factor authentication,  biometric access, digital locks, and many more to share files securely.

Moreover, hosted VDI providers keep your data in multiple safeguards like OS patching, antivirus management, TLS 1.3 and 256-bit data encryption, along with DDoS protection and ransomware best practices.

3. High Uptime

One thing a business cannot afford to lose is time. However, many times companies have to waste their crucial hours due to server downtime or an IT glitch. There may be chances that the issue is complex for the company’s internal IT team, and hence they may have to wait for the team to troubleshoot the issue.

With traditional VDI, as the servers are set on-premise, there could also be a significant crash in the motherboard of the server, and it takes a very long time to resolve the issue altogether. There is no solution for the employees in these situations but to sit idle and wait until things are sorted.

Taking hosted VDI services from a reputable provider may save a lot of your billable hours. The right provider offers you an uptime of 99.999% so that you can work round the clock without any hassles. Even in downtime cases, a highly qualified IT team is always ready to help you out 24×7 via phone, chat, or emails.

As the virtual desktops are created on the provider’s cloud network itself, the IT team does not have to reach your office and waste their time traveling. Hence, it takes significantly less time to bring the server back in place.

4. Significant Cost Reduction

To set up a virtual desktop infrastructure on-premise, the companies have to spend a substantial initial investment in purchasing servers and other hardware devices involved. The cost of maintenance and handling these bulky devices is even more in the long run.

Not only for startups or SMBs, but it is a significant expense for large enterprises as well. The cost of purchasing, upgrading servers, and updating software may vary according to the size of the workforce.

Though the on-premise VDI setup cost is more, you can always opt for hosted VDI at less cost for your enterprises by taking the provider’s pay-as-you-go model. This model means that you don’t have to make a huge upfront investment, and you can pay on a monthly or yearly subscription basis. This allows you to shift your expenses from Capex to Opex.

Your pricing will depend on the desktop configuration, number of desktops in use, storage capacity you need, and the provider you opt for.

5. Business Continuity

In traditional VDI, it was never possible to continue working even when there is a mishap or disaster like earthquakes or floods at your server location.

Have you ever thought that you would be able to continue your work even if the servers or data gets damaged?

However, VDI on the cloud made that possible. Hosted virtual desktop providers offer you disaster recovery as a solution or DRaaS facility. In DRaaS, providers replicate your data in multiple data centers located at geographically distant locations.

Hence, even if damage occurs at one place during a disaster, your data is protected in another data center safely. You will be able to access the data within no time as there is an automatic shift between the data centers during a mishap.

6. Promoted Green IT

Companies have a colossal infrastructure- hardware storage devices, desktops, and cabling that have to be disposed of when they malfunction. Moreover, for a comfortable environment and to avoid heating up of servers, office interiors have to be well air-conditioned.

Continuous running of all the devices requires high power consumption. A lot of energy consumption occurs, which leads to increased carbon emissions and pollution.

With virtual desktops, you can reduce the electronic indisposable waste as you have a less on-premise infrastructure. As most of your workforce is working from home, there is less power required to run the devices.

Moreover, providers have started using green data centers to store your data. These centers run on renewable energy and hence creates a pollution-free environment.

Conclusion

As you looked at all the similarities and differences that hosted VDI offers over traditional VDI, you must have understood why businesses prefer hosted desktops. Though companies are adopting VDI on the cloud, there are many companies that still work on the traditional VDI mechanism only because they have a substantial initial capital to invest.

There is a lot of inconsistency regarding the pricing of hosted VDI that revolves around the globe. This is only due to the plethora of cloud VDI providers that offer different plans in the market. You should be very aware of which provider to choose for your business else your things will become more complicated than it seems to be.

Keeping these all the pointers in mind, if you plan to go for hosted VDI services, then opt for the right provider to work hassle-free and have an inclination in business growth.

Author-Bio:

Sharad Acharya is a technical content writer at Ace Cloud Hosting, a renowned application hosting provider to the accounting industry. When not writing about the latest developments in cloud accounting, VDI solutions, and cybersecurity, he loves to watch movies and ride bikes.