Embodiments disclosed facilitate adaptation of interactive desktop applications (IDAs) for deployment and execution on distributed systems including clouds. In some embodiments, the method comprises: executing a cloud-based IDA on a dedicated elastic Virtual Machine (VM) running on at least one of a plurality of cloud infrastructures using a remote client device; and invoking an application on the remote client device comprising a remote desktop protocol (RDP) to connect to the VM on the at least one cloud infrastructure to facilitate remote user interaction with the at least one cloud-based IDA using functionality provided by the RDP. In some embodiments, the remote client application may be a web browser and RDP may be implemented using browser plugins. Further, the remote client application may sync data with cloud infrastructure before and after IDA execution, and the VM running the IDA may be terminated when user exits the IDA.