Splashtop Remote Desktop won our Editors' Choice award and a stellar 4.5 rating for good reason; it's cheap, simple to setup and use, and streams HD video from your PC to your phone or tablet with very few hitches. Today, Splashtop announced plans to scratch the BYOD itch and bring its remote desktop software to remote workers around the world with a new Splashtop for Business offering, which the company calls a "High-performance alternative" to existing VPN, RDP, VNC and Citrix-based offerings.
Splashtop for Business works a bit differently than the consumer version given enterprise's more robust security needs. Administrators will have to install the secure Splashtop Center software on a central server, then create and assign user permissions from within the program. Next, the admin sends users a notification containing their account information and a download link. Once users install the Splashtop for Business app on their mobile devices and the Splashtop for Business Streamer on a host computer (or computers), they're good to go.
The software supports every major desktop and mobile platform, including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, WebOS and Blackberry. (Sorry, Windows Phone users; Microsoft's mobile offering isn't quite a major platform yet.) Any mobile device can remotely interact with any host computer, regardless of which platform the devices run on.
That's achieved by performing hardware-accelerated encoding on the host computer paired with hardware-accelerated decoding on the receiving end. The setup helps to carry Splashtop Remote Desktop's impressive speed over to the workplace offering, with the company claiming 30 frames per second streaming rates and under 30-millisecond latency.
More than 10,000 businesses have been running a preview version of Splashtop for Business over the past few months, giving Splashtop plenty of opportunity to work out any niggling kinks. The Early Access Program included customers with demanding security needs, including the Lake County, Ohio Juvenile Court.
Apps like LogMeIn, TeamViewer Remote Control and Splashtop Remote Desktop itself have allowed employees to remotely access their work PCs for a while now, but they've focused more on single user solutions. Splashtop for Business is designed for business adoption, not individual adoption, putting control back into the hands of the IT department and offering many enterprise-friendly features.
Speaking of admin-friendly features, the Splashtop for Business website contains nitty gritty details about SSL-AES access, connection logging, Active Directory integration and more. Pricing starts at $2,400 per year for up to 25 seats, with a free trial available for curious companies.