Turn any legacy desktop app into browser-accessible internal SaaS
This is the feature that pays for itself in the first quarter.
Desktop-to-SaaS takes any traditional desktop application — the kind that requires installation, a specific OS, and often a per-seat license — and publishes it as a browser-accessible internal service. Users open a URL, authenticate through Tophan, and use the application in their browser. No installation, no OS dependency, no client-side anything.
Tophan wraps the target application in an isolated container with a virtual display, then streams the rendered output through noVNC to the user’s browser. The application thinks it’s running on a normal desktop. The user sees a responsive application in a browser tab. Tophan handles session management, authentication, scaling, and resource allocation.
Multi-user access is built in. Each user gets their own isolated session with separate state, storage, and configuration. Twenty users can run the same application simultaneously — each sees their own instance, unaware of the others.
For applications that were designed for a different operating system, Tophan runs them under a compatibility layer (Wine for applications originally targeting non-Linux platforms). The application doesn’t know. The user doesn’t know. It just works.
Almost any desktop application is a candidate:
The only hard requirement is that the application must run on Linux natively or under Wine. Applications that require kernel-level drivers, custom hardware dongles, or real-time hardware access are not candidates.
The licensing math is where this feature becomes transformational.
Traditional desktop application delivery in enterprise environments requires server operating system licenses, remote desktop access licenses (per user or per device), and often terminal server infrastructure licenses. For an organization with 500 users accessing 10 published applications, these costs run into tens of thousands per year — and that’s before the application licenses themselves.
Tophan eliminates every one of those costs. The server runs Linux. The display protocol is open source. There are no per-user access fees, no per-device fees, no terminal infrastructure fees. The only remaining cost is the application license itself — and because Tophan can manage concurrent usage, you license for peak concurrent users rather than total headcount.
For applications that run under the compatibility layer, the savings compound. The application’s native OS licenses are no longer needed — not on the server, not on the client, not anywhere. An organization running 10 legacy applications for 500 users can eliminate hundreds of OS-family licenses entirely.
The reduction is not incremental. It’s structural. Every user you add costs compute resources (pennies per hour) instead of per-seat license fees (hundreds per year). The economics flip from “pay per person” to “pay per usage” — and usage-based costs on your own hardware are a fraction of per-seat licensing from vendors.