Parsons said there is growing customer awareness of the benefits of Windows To Go, and that is leading to a growing business for the company.

Windows To Go allows administrators to install a secure, managed Windows environment onto a thumb or external drive that can be booted on most reasonably modern computers. For security reasons, the computer's own storage is only available to users with administrative rights.

For performance reasons, Windows 8 Hardware Certification requires the drive to have a USB 3.0 interface, high random read/write speed, and it must reports as fixed media. Vendors such as Imation, Kingston and SuperTalent offer qualified thumb drives.

Ways in which it is being used are to provide a secure and managed environments to short-term contractors (to avoid having to provide them with company-owned computers) or to employees who prefer to use their own computers (BYOD).

It is also useful for organisations with employees in remote areas with poor connectivity, as it is a lot easier to send out thumb drives with updated system images than replacement computers, and the network connection isn't taken over by system management traffic.

She said it is also being used to run Windows 8 or 8.1 in organisations that have yet to migrate from earlier versions of the operating system. That might be to use a program that requires Windows 8 or later, or as a convenient mechanism for proofs of concept.

Windows To Go is also being used to test in-house applications under Windows 8 and 10, Parsons added.

She pointed out that Windows To Go and VDI should not be seen as exclusive choices, although Windows To Go doesn't require the servers needed for VDI, avoids network bandwidth issues, and is a relatively safe way of computing when visiting "certain countries" - the business traveller can take a vanilla notebook, boot and run from a (perhaps separately and discreetly packed) Windows To Go drive during the trip, and then the IT department can sanitise the notebook on return.

Windows To Go is "a benefit of [Microsoft's] Software Assurance," Parsons said, which is available for as few as five users. If Windows To Go is the only reason for paying for Software Assurance, that form of licensing is only required for the number of people that will be using that feature, and the rest can stay on the Windows OEM licence provided with the computers. The smallest organisations can obtain Windows To Go through InTune subscriptions, she added, which also provides a convenient mechanism where there is a short-term requirement for Windows To Go.

In related news, Imation is celebrating the sale of two million IronKey devices by giving away 1,000 golden IronKey flash drives "to top customers and to channel champions that have secured the biggest customer deals... [and] qualified prospects who are participating in marketing promotions such as trade shows, CrowdChats and other marketing activities."

Find one way of getting a golden-finished 8GB S1000 IronKey drive here.