Operations
Shared Responsibility Model
Before and after a move to Computle, it helps to know which responsibilities Computle takes on and which stay with your own team or technical support provider. This page lists them area by area.
Division of responsibility
Section titled “Division of responsibility”With workstations in an office, you or your technical support provider buy, maintain, upgrade and dispose of the hardware. With Computle, the provisioning, maintenance and lifecycle of the workstations are Computle’s. The workstation is one part of your IT; the rest stays as it was.
User and identity management
Section titled “User and identity management”Computle:
- Computle hosts your domain controllers in your Computle environment. There is no charge for hosting domain controllers.
- The Computle Portal lets you reset the local administrator account on each workstation.
You or your technical support provider:
- All user management: account creation, access permissions, password resets and the identity platform (Entra ID, Google Workspace and so on).
Networking
Section titled “Networking”Computle:
- The network inside Computle sites, connecting workstations and hosted infrastructure to the internet.
- The site-to-site VPN gateway in the Computle Portal.
- Upstream carriers and peering, public IP addressing, DNS for Computle services and tenant namespaces.
You or your technical support provider:
- Office network infrastructure: internet connections, firewalls, your side of any VPN, Wi-Fi, routers and switches.
Cloud services
Section titled “Cloud services”Computle:
- Connectivity from the workstations to cloud services. Computle does not manage the services themselves (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Azure, AWS, GCP).
You or your technical support provider:
- Cloud service management: licensing, user access, security configuration and cloud infrastructure.
Servers and storage
Section titled “Servers and storage”Computle:
- Hosting virtualised storage so workstations reach their data locally.
- Hosting storage appliances such as Panzura, or providing Computle Files.
You or your technical support provider:
- Data residency, compliance, file management, data integrity and any other storage or caching solution.
Applications
Section titled “Applications”Computle:
- Software updates to the hypervisors, networking equipment, routers, firewalls and other Computle equipment, at regular intervals.
- Vulnerability management across the Computle estate.
- Computle does not manage software installation or updates inside the Windows workstation. Maintenance on the hypervisor can trigger a Windows restart.
You or your technical support provider:
- Installation, maintenance and updates of applications on the workstations (Microsoft 365, Adobe, custom software and so on). The Computle Portal’s patching and application deployment features are tools for this; the decisions remain yours.
Imaging
Section titled “Imaging”Computle:
- The Imaging page of the Computle Portal, for capturing and deploying workstation images.
- Image hosting, free of charge.
- Console access to a workstation during boot, for deploying custom images.
- Hosting for Windows Deployment Services shares and hosts, and DHCP for them, at no cost.
- A managed image deployment service under a professional services agreement.
You or your technical support provider:
- Building, maintaining and updating the Windows image for your workstations, outside any professional services agreement.
Licensing
Section titled “Licensing”Computle:
- Windows 11 Professional licensing for the hosted workstations.
You or your technical support provider:
- Software licences and subscriptions for productivity suites, antivirus, Client Access Licences and other tools.
Printers
Section titled “Printers”Computle:
- Computle does not manage printers.
- Computle can help set up VPN access to network devices. There is no fee for this.
You or your technical support provider:
- Printers, scanners, copiers and other peripherals, including print servers, drivers and troubleshooting.
Security
Section titled “Security”Computle:
- Security of the Computle infrastructure, as described in Security at Computle.
- Baseline security for hosted workstations: firewall rules and optional encryption within Computle sites.
You or your technical support provider:
- Endpoint protection, network firewalls, your side of VPNs, email filtering and compliance with data security regulations.
Data integrity and availability
Section titled “Data integrity and availability”Computle:
- Stable operation of the virtualised environment, within the SLA.
- Computle does not routinely back up client data or provide disaster recovery unless agreed.
You or your technical support provider:
- Backups (cloud, on-premise or hybrid) and disaster recovery plans, unless otherwise agreed.
Computle:
- Computle does not manage email systems.
You or your technical support provider:
- Email platforms such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft 365 or Gmail, including user provisioning, security, spam filtering and backup.
Compliance
Section titled “Compliance”Computle:
- Computle is ISO 27001 certified. See ISO 27001.
You or your technical support provider:
- Compliance with the regulations that apply to you (GDPR, HIPAA and so on) across your IT, including data storage, encryption and access control.
Monitoring
Section titled “Monitoring”Computle:
- Health and performance monitoring of hosted workstations and virtualised systems.
- Telemetry from Computle applications and the workstations.
- Finding and fixing operational faults.
You or your technical support provider:
- Monitoring of the rest of your IT: network performance, cloud service uptime, server health and security monitoring.
Support
Section titled “Support”Computle:
- Keeping workstations in its sites working, and support with connecting to your Computle workstation, raised as a ticket through the Computle Portal. There is no charge per support ticket. Support is generally provided between 9am and 5pm UK time.
- Computle does not provide end-user support for other matters unless covered by a professional services agreement.
You or your technical support provider:
- Day-to-day end-user support: software issues, password resets and general troubleshooting.
Hardware
Section titled “Hardware”Computle:
- The physical infrastructure in its sites: hypervisors, storage, networking and other hardware.
- Computle Devices supplied to your users. The device is locked down and nothing is stored on it. See Computle Device.
You or your technical support provider:
- Office hardware: printers, network equipment, monitors and peripherals.
Computle:
- SLAs covering the availability and uptime of hosted workstations in its sites.
You or your technical support provider:
- Contracts and SLAs with other providers: internet, cloud platforms and software vendors.
Automation
Section titled “Automation”Computle:
- Automation within the Computle estate. Computle does not write scripts for your wider IT.
- Scripts and installers for the self-service Computle components, such as the client and host, for you or your technical support provider to deploy.
You or your technical support provider:
- Automation for backups, software updates and network monitoring.
Telephony
Section titled “Telephony”Computle:
- Computle does not manage telephony or VoIP.
You or your technical support provider:
- Telephony: VoIP services, phone systems and integrations such as Microsoft Teams or Google Meet.