MacStadium recently debuted the first virtual Mac desktop cloud solution. I spoke with Chris Chapman, the company’s senior vice president and chief technology officer, to learn more.
Orka Workspace is now available from MacStadium.
First, some background on the solution. MacStadium, like AWS, has been offering M1 Mac minis-as-a-service for a while; what’s new is the addition of virtual desktops, which you can work on remotely. It essentially means that you can use a Mac from any location, at any time, and on any device. This is referred to as Orka Workspace by MacStadium.
Orka Workspace, like so much else emerging in the Apple enterprise, caters to the needs of remote workers. It’s designed specifically for businesses looking for secure and flexible ways for employees to access secure work computing environments from anywhere.
Why is now an excellent time for Mac-as-a-service?
“The right moment has arrived for Mac-as-a-service because the Apple ecosphere is growing and accelerating at an incredible rate,” Chapman said. “It is not only the primary way we use technology in our personal lives, but it is also increasingly becoming the tool of choice in our professional lives.”
The use cases expand in tandem with the ecosystem. “In the enterprise world, the landscape is shifting from centralized to decentralized workforces, and people are leveraging bring your own desktop (BYOD), which is leading to Mac as a primary choice,” said Chapman. “As an enterprise, providing consistent, secure tools has become critical.” And providing access to the Mac platform is a significant gap in current cloud capabilities.”
How does the Mac get to be a service?
The Mac is just not crafted to be remote-friendly. It’s designed to be a bicycle for an individual’s imagination, not a velocipede for a hive mind. It is not a machine from which you can work remotely, and its operating system was not designed to live in the cloud. MacStadium needed to find a way to bridge that gap.
“We have spent a lot of time into enabling both hardware as well as software technology around the Mac in order to offer performance and management abilities for an effective experience,” Chapman said.
How does this occurs once individuals utilise it?
Administrators can quickly create Mac desktops that run on actual Apple hardware and distribute access to their teams when they are in use. The system also includes a thin client interface for accessing the Mac desktop through a browser.
While the service is now available globally, IT administrators concerned about data sovereignty should be aware that the Macs are stored in the company’s data centre. (This may be less important given the limitations of desktop storage, which are discussed further below.)
MacStadium currently operates data centres in the United States and Ireland, with plans to open a new facility in India in early 2023.
