A foundational explainer for resellers who may not yet be selling remote desktop solutions — and why they should start.
If you’re an IT reseller whose business is built on hardware — selling PCs, monitors, peripherals, and the occasional server — remote desktop software might feel like someone else’s territory. It’s something the MSPs and cloud providers sell, not something you pitch alongside a mini PC order.
That thinking is leaving money on the table.
The global remote desktop software market was valued at approximately USD 3.7–3.9 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 14+ billion by the mid-2030s, growing at a CAGR of 14–15%. The broader Remote Desktop Services market is estimated at USD 8.5 billion in 2025, heading toward USD 15.3 billion by 2032. The SME segment alone is expected to capture 60% of the remote desktop software market by 2035 — which means the growth is happening in exactly the customer base most hardware resellers already serve.
Remote desktop isn’t a niche add-on anymore. It’s becoming core infrastructure for businesses of every size. And CloudWare is how you can participate in that growth without needing to become a cloud provider or an MSP.
Here’s what you need to understand.
What Remote Desktop Actually Does (In Plain English)
At its simplest, a remote desktop solution lets a user access a computer — usually a server — from somewhere else. The server runs the applications and stores the data. The user’s device (whether it’s a PC, laptop, tablet, or phone) displays what’s happening on the server and sends back keyboard and mouse inputs. Everything the user does happens on the server; the endpoint is just a window into that environment.
Think of it like this: the user sits at their desk with a screen and a keyboard, but the actual computer they’re working on is sitting in a server room or data centre somewhere else. The screen shows what’s on that remote machine in real time.
This is the foundation that technologies like Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Citrix, and VMware Horizon are built on. It’s also the foundation that CloudWare is built on.
Why Businesses Actually Want This
Remote desktop isn’t a technology people adopt because it’s clever. They adopt it because it solves real operational problems. Here’s what drives the conversation with customers:
Work from anywhere. The most obvious use case. An employee can access their full work environment — applications, files, desktop — from home, a branch office, a client site, or a hotel room. All they need is a device with a browser or an RDP client and an internet connection. Over 27% of workers globally now operate in hybrid arrangements, and that number continues to grow. For SA businesses dealing with load shedding, this means an employee whose office loses power can seamlessly continue working from wherever they have connectivity.
Centralised management. Instead of managing 50 individual PCs — each with its own OS updates, application installs, security patches, and configuration quirks — the IT team manages one server environment. Applications are installed once, updates are applied once, and every user gets the same consistent experience. This dramatically reduces IT overhead, particularly for businesses without large IT teams.
Security. Data lives on the server, not on the endpoint device. If an employee’s laptop is stolen or a mini PC is taken from a branch office, the thief gets a piece of hardware — not the company’s data, applications, or customer information. Centralised desktop virtualisation reduces endpoint security incidents by 41% according to industry data. For businesses in regulated industries — financial services, healthcare, legal — this matters enormously for POPIA and other compliance requirements.
Cost efficiency. Users don’t need powerful endpoint devices to run demanding applications. The heavy lifting happens on the server. A user running accounting software, a CRM, or even a design tool through a remote desktop session doesn’t need a high-spec local machine — they need a reliable endpoint with a screen and a network connection. This extends the useful life of existing hardware and reduces the spec (and cost) of new endpoint purchases.
Application publishing. Modern remote desktop solutions don’t just serve up a full desktop — they can publish individual applications. A user opens their accounting package or line-of-business application, and it appears in a window on their local machine as if it were installed locally. They don’t see or interact with the remote desktop at all — just the application they need. This is sometimes called RemoteApp-style delivery, and it’s a much cleaner user experience than a full remote desktop for many use cases.
Where CloudWare Fits
CloudWare is a remote desktop and application delivery solution. It allows businesses to publish Windows applications and full desktops to users over a network, accessible via RDP clients or HTML5 web browsers.
For resellers, the key things to know about CloudWare are:
It’s an RDS alternative, not just an RDS add-on. CloudWare provides the core functionality of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services — multi-user remote access, application publishing, session management — without requiring the complex infrastructure that traditional RDS demands. You don’t need to configure separate Gateway, Broker, and Web Access roles. The setup is significantly simpler.
HTML5 browser access. Users can connect to their remote desktop or published applications through a standard web browser — no client software installation required on the endpoint device. This is critical for BYOD environments and for scenarios where you can’t or don’t want to install software on the user’s device.
It works with the hardware you’re already selling. A CloudGate R7 or R9 on the user’s desk, connecting to a CloudWare server in the customer’s data centre or hosted environment — that’s a complete solution. The mini PC handles local tasks and provides the display, keyboard, and mouse interface. CloudWare delivers the server-side applications. The two work together seamlessly.
Perpetual licensing model. Unlike subscription-heavy alternatives where costs recur annually and escalate over time, CloudWare’s licensing structure is designed to be predictable and reseller-friendly. This is a significant differentiator against Citrix (which can run $1,200+ per user per year at the enterprise level) and even Microsoft RDS (which requires layered CAL licensing — more on that in Article 7).
Who Should You Be Pitching This To?
Not every customer needs a remote desktop solution, but more of them need one than you might think. Here are the profiles that should trigger the CloudWare conversation:
Any business with remote or hybrid workers. If even a portion of the workforce operates from home or from the road, they need secure access to business applications. CloudWare gives them that without requiring a VPN setup or exposing the internal network.
Businesses with branch offices. A head office server running business applications, with branch users accessing them via CloudWare over the WAN. The applications run centrally; the branches only need reliable endpoints and connectivity. This simplifies IT management enormously for multi-site businesses.
Companies running legacy Windows applications. This is a surprisingly large market in South Africa. Many businesses depend on line-of-business applications — accounting packages, ERP systems, practice management tools — that only run on Windows. CloudWare lets you host those applications on a central server and deliver them to users on any device, including Macs, tablets, and Chromebooks. No rewriting, no porting, no compatibility headaches.
Businesses concerned about data security and POPIA compliance. If the customer’s compliance officer is worried about sensitive data living on employee laptops and endpoint devices, centralising everything on a server through CloudWare addresses that concern directly. Data stays on the server; endpoints are just access points.
Education institutions. Schools and universities with computer labs can use CloudWare to deliver applications from a central server to low-cost endpoints, reducing per-seat hardware costs and simplifying lab management. Software updates happen once on the server rather than on every individual machine.
Accounting and professional services firms. These businesses live in their line-of-business applications and need reliable access from multiple locations. A CloudWare setup lets partners and staff access Sage, Pastel, Caseware, or similar tools from anywhere — office, home, or client site.
The Reseller Opportunity
Here’s why CloudWare matters to your business specifically:
It turns hardware sales into solutions sales. A CloudGate mini PC is a product. A CloudGate mini PC plus CloudWare plus a server recommendation plus setup services is a solution. Solutions sell at higher margins, create stickier customer relationships, and generate follow-on revenue.
It creates recurring revenue. Whether through licence renewals, support contracts, or managed services wrapped around the CloudWare deployment, remote desktop solutions generate ongoing revenue that hardware alone doesn’t.
It differentiates you from box-shifters. Any reseller can quote a mini PC. The reseller who can also architect a remote desktop environment, deploy CloudWare, and support the customer’s application delivery — that’s a partner, not a vendor. Partners don’t get price-shopped as easily.
The customer already has the problem. They just might not know there’s a solution, or they might assume it requires Citrix-level budgets and complexity. CloudWare gives you a product to offer that’s accessible to SMBs, not just enterprises — and the SMB segment is the fastest-growing part of the remote desktop market.
It cross-sells naturally with CloudGate. You’re already in the conversation about endpoint hardware. Adding CloudWare to the discussion is a natural extension — “here’s the device for their desk, and here’s how they access their server applications.” It doesn’t require a separate sales motion or a different buyer; it’s the same conversation, extended.
The Bottom Line
Remote desktop technology has been around for decades, but for most of that time it was enterprise-only — requiring Citrix licences, complex server farms, and dedicated IT teams to manage. That’s changed. Modern solutions like CloudWare bring the same core capability to SMBs at a fraction of the cost and complexity.
For South African IT resellers, the opportunity is clear: your customers need secure, flexible access to their business applications from anywhere, on any device. They need centralised management that doesn’t require an enterprise IT budget. And they need it to work alongside the hardware you’re already selling them.
CloudWare is that bridge. It turns your CloudGate hardware sale into a complete workspace solution — and it positions you as the reseller who solves problems, not just sells products.
CloudWare remote desktop solutions are available through authorised reseller channels. Contact CloudGate at info@cloudgate.co.za or call 010 140 4400 for product demonstrations, reseller pricing, and technical documentation. Visit www.cloudgate.co.za for more information.