Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for providing a mobile persona environment hosted by a network accessible server that can be activated by network connected client device. The client device points the portion of its file system used by the operating system to configure the desktop environment to a persona container hosted by the server. The persona container includes user data, applications and operating system settings or policies that are used to configure the operating system of the client device to provide the mobile persona environment. The client device obtains user profile information and connection information from a persona reference object stored on the client device. Applications are executed locally on the client device while the data remains secure in the network accessible server.