Terminal Services and you: 3 reasons why you should be on the bandwagon

PART II

This is the second blog in my three part series about the advantages of Terminal Services. Check out reason #2!

2. Ease of access (user mobility) – Everyone loves working from home; it saves us money and time. I know that sounds a little cliché but bear with me here. A Terminal Services setup is much more flexible in terms of remote access and the ease of that access.

In an orthodox user workstation situation, if you want to work from home but don’t have a laptop, you’re out of luck unless your workstation is turned on. If that’s the case, then you can access it remotely, but need to have VPN access. Well, that kind of sounds like a pain from a user’s perspective, doesn’t it? Usually it is. With a Terminal Services solution, this is made much easier because the user already has an account, most likely through an AD setup that they access the Terminal Server with. With that already done, all they need is a home computer with Internet access and a VPN connection. Once they get on VPN, they can just log on to their server as usual. Now how is this better? For one good reason, the server is always on and you don’t have to worry about your apps and files not being there. It’s the same idea with traveling—most hotels these days accommodate VPN access on their business center PC’s, so once again all you need to do is remember your VPN username and password and bam, you’re working.