What’s new in Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition

hello and welcome to the parallels desktop from mac business edition webinar my name is ian appleby and i'm the territory manager for parallels desktop solution for uk and ireland and i'll be taking you through the webinar today going to cover some simple topics first for those of the uninitiated among you i'll talk a little bit about who we are as parallels and what we do then a look at how mac devices are coming more and more into business and corporate and learning environments and the sort of challenges that that poses why we think it's a good idea for you to choose parallels desktop business edition as a solution and then i'll look at some features current features and also new features in the new version version 16 which launched on the 11th of august so parallels we're a global software company you might have guessed that we're present in 140 countries around the world represented in those countries by more than 5 000 channel partners who engage with you and help us sell our products in terms of reach within business more than 20 percent of the fortune 500 companies use and trust parallels as a solution and we also have a consumer product and there are more than seven million individuals around the globe who are using that consumer product primarily to run windows and windows applications on a mac and within business more than fifty thousand businesses rely on the capabilities of parallels desktop to be able to run windows applications on mac computers but parallels desktop isn't our only solution yes it is the easiest fastest and most powerful solution for running windows on a mac but we also have a number of other solutions and that was my phone ringing sorry about that parallels toolbox for mac and windows is a really powerful set of tools and if you're a parallels desktop for mac business edition user already you will have parallels toolbox as it comes bundled with the software i use this every day several times a day i'm using it right now to stop any interruptions on my screen sadly it doesn't stop the phone ringing but it will stop any interruptions from coming up on my screen while i'm presenting to you it'll also stop my mac from going to sleep if i ask you to do that there are more than 30 tools small day-to-day useful tools and i recommend that you have a look at that it's it's a great little device we also have parallels access which allows you to access your desktop from anywhere and in these difficult times when it's not always possible to get to your office then parallels access is a great tool and we have two enterprise softwares as well remote application server which is a great remote application delivery and vdi solution and parallels mac management which is actually a plug-in for microsoft config manager and it allows it admins to control their mac computers under the same pane of glass and with the same infrastructure as they control their windows estate so that's the the breadth of the portfolio and why do we do all this we we we do all this and we're in business because mac is a growing um part of the computer environment within businesses and within education uh at latest count the mac os market share was around about 10 worldwide and that's growing year on year it's grown 25 in the last four years and we know that that means that mac computers have about the same penetration because mac os is only licensed on mac computers so about 10 of of computers out there are max and most mac users prefer to work with macs because they perceive they have increased productivity if you're a mac user and if you know mac users you know that on the whole we're all big fans of the devices that we use and in terms of employees a lot of companies now are moving towards choose your own and bring your own device policies and the reason they're doing that is that we're all aware that employees feel more valued when they're allowed to choose or bring their own device to work and many more of those employees are choosing mac and and that's helping drive max in in the workplace but we also know that in terms of mac users the large majority experience issues with their device less frequently than pc users do and mac users generally as i've said they love their macs but also they find them more efficient and less problematic to use in the workplace but max coming into the workplace can cause a number of challenges and the number one challenge and i think that would all accept this is that we live in a windows dominated world and within a business environment in particular many important business applications are written only for windows and are simply not available natively on the mac so that's where parallels comes in also from a brand loyalty and from a point of view of employee productivity employees want to use macs if they're forced to use windows then they have a learning curve because they're often mac users at home and that can make them less productive if they have to get familiar with windows devices but also because of wanting to use mac but living in a windows world we have to use multiple different operating systems at the same time windows mac sometimes linux sometimes even others especially maybe if we're in a software development or a testing environment where we need to be able to test on safari and chrome and internet explorer and are beta versions of our software making sure that they work in all of those different environments so we come in here and there are corporate objectives things that businesses are trying to do that we can help and that's where parallels really comes into its own so firstly choose your own and bring your own device strategies i've talked about those a little bit employees are choosing mac bringing back into the workplace and be because the workplace needs windows and windows applications then parallels can help run both operating systems on the same device companies can provide access to mac and windows applications instantly and from a productivity point of view that we can provide a similar experience on both operating systems so you don't have that steep learning curve because mac users will be very familiar with the way that their windows applications look when they're using them on a mac so we can save on training and speed up onboarding what else do we do to oper increase operational efficiency so the first thing and the most important thing and what we're really known for is running windows side by side on a mac with the mac operating system and being able to switch seamlessly between the mac and the windows environments either running them in a coherence mode where they're absolutely integrated or simply by switching three fingers swiping three fingers on the track pad moving between mac and windows and swiping back again and it's all very quick and easy we allow external usb devices to be plugged into a mac and used in a windows environment and some of these are actually windows only compatible devices but you can now plug them into your mac and use what's on those devices in the windows environment printing printing can be a nightmare if you've got different devices in the market in in the workplace but we allow through parallels desktop for business users to print windows files onto printers which are configured to run in the mac environment and that's really important and primarily from a a point of view of speed of operation we don't need you to log out of mac and into windows and back again for instance like you have to with boot camp in order to launch windows on a mac and and move back vice versa so we're very quick and easy from that point of view so what do you need um to be able to do this so firstly once you have parallels desktop loaded on your machine you do need windows operating system or another operating system and you'll need a windows license it's not included in the software we provide you with the ability to do it but not actually with the windows now very shortly unless it's already happened by the time you're listening to this webinar apple will be releasing their next operating system and this is a big release for them we're moving away from os 10 onto os 11 big sur now we're already primed for that parallels desktop 16 is ready to run big sur ready to run on big sur when it comes but also we're backward compatible with catalina mojave high sierra we always give you at least four operating systems from mac that you can run on we're ready for mass deployment so using jamf apple remote desktop our own parallels mac management product plugged into microsoft config manager you can deploy our software in a mass way using any of those devices and with the parallels subscription you qualify for 24 7 premium support and of course for the subscription any upgrades and new versions are available to you during the life of the subscription so the key features what do you get with parallels desktop for business so number one from a productivity point of view you can run mac and windows operating systems side by side without having to pause without having to reboot and also very importantly all files and folders are seamlessly available between applications on both mac and windows setup is really easy with parallels desktop when you download it and install it it knows what you need to get up and running if you need windows it'll tell you to download windows if you already have windows on your machine if you have it in boot camp it will allow you to use that windows installation to bring into a new virtual machine through parallels desktop now graphics we've done a lot of work on this over the last two versions we can run really graphic heavy resource hungry windows applications now on the mac without slowing it down in the last version we released compatibility with metal so directx 11 will now run very well or direct x11 applications will run very well and in this version we've got improved support for opengl 3 so apps will run much faster we give you a choice of how it looks um so i'm a fan of coherence mode my windows applications are there in my toolbar ready for me to use all i do is click on them and they open is just like any mac application you can actually set it so that windows will occupy the whole screen and your mac will look like a windows desktop a lot of people bringing their macs into into the workplace like to do this so while they're at work their mac looks like a pc they take it home it becomes a mac again and you can choose which one you have at any one time in terms of compatibility then we will run almost i have to kind of say almost rather than every because there's always going to be an exception but business critical apps without any sort of slowing down without any trade-off and performance will run on your mac microsoft office is still the most popular suite of applications that we run but things like quickbooks which is windows only running things like sap on a client via internet explorer or edge those sorts of things which could only do in windows you can now do on the mac and as i said earlier parallels desktop 16 the the current version launched on april uh august the 11th will support four host mac os versions right back to high sierra so that if you don't want to upgrade your hardware then you can still use old operating systems you don't have to have the very very latest in order to use our products so now new features in the current version we've got even better improved graphics support with um the opengl 3 support with a product like parallels which run now on version 16 we're always looking still to make kind of core improvement and the speed that the product launches and the way that windows launches and resumes is getting faster all the time and also with every version we take up less space on the mac as well because space is at a premium we know that in terms of support for the mac operating system this is one of the core reasons why subscription is really important and the ability to get the latest versions when they come out when the next release of mac os arrives big sur mac os 11 there's a lot of change on there and we've worked tirelessly thousands of man-hours in order to have this ready so that we're ready for the new operating system when it arrives parallels desktop 16 on big sur one of the big changes doesn't require system extensions and this makes deployment absolutely seamless and this is a real change implemented by apple and by us which is out in this new version and we have some brand new printing features as well two-sided printing it's it's new to us from the windows point of view and so from a windows application you can print two-sided onto a mac bound printer within parallels desktop business edition the reason most of our customers choose this over our other versions is because of the admin features and for an it admin those of you who are in that role who are listening to this will appreciate it i'm sure we allow you to deploy hundreds of installations really really quickly um using things like jamf pro and parallels mac management as we've already said but also you can tune those parallels desktop settings and deliver them so that the end user doesn't have to worry about the way the parallels desktop is set up you can do that as an admin before you deploy and parallels has a great portal log into your account and all of this can be done through the parallels desktop account on our website from an admin point of view both for an it admin for purchasing for finance we allow you to use a single license key for all installations it's a single contract and on the subscription it's a single renewal date as well in a single transaction so whether it's five or five thousand licenses and users that you have within the business they can all be controlled in exactly the same way and all be done on one single transaction and you can look into the portal you can see your license usage stats and you can manage deployed licenses you can take them off machines put them onto new machines all through the portal very very straightforward setup is really quick which is really important to you you can get new users enrolled in just a few clicks you can use our automatically generated emails and you send those to the user there's a link on there they click they get it downloaded the installations just happen automatically and security as well obviously security is very important to you we allow you to enforce policies for things like you know usb sticks smart cards other external devices you can either lock them down or not and you can allow all of your mac based windows instances all the virtual machines to be tied into active directory as well and data protection is important to you as well if you have contractors in the building who are there only for a short time you can allow them to use parallels desktop on windows on those desktops but with a virtual machine that will actually expire after a certain time so when those contractors leave the building you can make sure they don't take anything with them new admin features and this is a great one for it admins we now allow you to download a corporate windows vm a pre-configured virtual machine from the my account portal on parallels so everybody gets the the corporate windows that you want them to receive in the way that you want it to appear and with all of the policies that you've already applied and that's a great addition to the features now from a point of view of upgrades we now allow you either to allow automatic parallel updates or to disable automatic upgrades and for you to be able to do that whenever you want but if you allow the automatic access then you don't need to put an admin password in every time this happens it can save you time or you can block it from happening we give you the choice and it's it's easier to update so you don't need admin credentials to update parallels desktop in terms of installation on big sur a big change here is that there's no requirement for the approval of system extensions by admin because there are no external system extensions coming from the parallels desktop site it makes installation really quick it's seamless and once you've passed it onto them you don't need to get involved with the individual approving of those extensions so let's have a quick look at what we get then within parallels number one with our subscription you're always up to date we're optimized for the latest windows 10 updates and we're absolutely ready for big sur when that comes out in the autumn and obviously as i said also catalina mojave high sierra we work with all of those from a flexibility point of view we work with os x windows 10 down to windows 8 linux unix mac os server there's no need now to choose between a mac or pc you can add the best of both worlds on a single device we support retina display from a connection point of view usb usbc firewire devices you can connect with windows through your mac on those sorts of devices it's very important to have office 365 integration that's probably still the main reason why people are using parallels desktop yes office for mac exists and yes it's good but it's different if you're used to using office for windows it can be a hard transition to office for mac as a mac user i use all of my office suite in a windows environment even outlook out looks very different on a mac and one click tuning this is really important as well for your users if your main thing is games design software testing there's one click to choose the best settings for each of those sorts of environments and those sort of workflows so you don't have to fiddle with individual settings just press it once and it will set parallels desktop exactly how you need it so let's just recap one of our key differentiators so virtualization we're using mac and windows os side by side we're sharing files and folders between applications on mac and windows it doesn't matter which operating system they're in there's no need to reboot when you want to move from mac to windows and back again they're both running seamlessly side by side and now even more graphic heavy resource hungry windows applications will run great they won't slow you down performance and graphics we've talked about graphics we're getting better and faster at running graphic hungry applications directx 11 via metal is brilliant and applications that rely on that will now run in windows and support for opengl 3 makes running things on the mac even faster too i've talked about the ease of use downloading and installing not having to reboot but you can use your current bootcamp windows in your virtual machine so if you have a windows license already installed you can use that license to run the virtual machine windows as well and in terms of integration windows and mac are absolutely incoherence mode integrated you don't know as a user that you're running mac and windows you click on the application it just opens and it just runs and it's there for you when you need it and i'm going to let you look at this slide on your own is there competition yes of course there is we're not the only players in the market boot camp is there and it's free but why do we think we're better because from productivity point of view you don't have to reboot ever to move between mac and windows and back again and because they're running both at the same time your files are there to be used and shared between mac and windows applications and yes vmware great company great product likewise with oracle but there are some reasons on there why we believe we're better we give a better performance and from a pc point of view yeah pcs let's face it it's 90 of the marketplace but we give you the best of both worlds pc and mac on the same device and you don't just have to take my word for it so jacob choose um from mayborne wolf you can read it but i'm going to read it to you compared to competing products parallels desktop is user-friendly integrated into mac os in a better way and easier to configure couldn't have put it better myself jacob alexander huber is a man of few words but what great words they are parallels desktop is the ideal solution for our back office harry shuler on the other hand is a man of many words and i'm not going to read that one out to you but suffice to say he loves parallels desktop for business now that's the end of the presentation i just want to thank you all for joining if your curiosity has been sparked and you'd like to have a look at parallels desktop then go to parallels.com and you can download a trial have a play see how it works for you pull in some of your windows applications and just put it through its paces you won't be disappointed thank you very much for listening and i hope to see you all again soon