Switch from Citrix to Parallels Remote Application Server v.15.5

foreign and today I'll be presenting you this webinar about Citrix replacement Technologies just to set a couple of things please if you have questions please post them in the chat window and we'll be addressing in the end of the session today also this particular webinar will have a presentation and as well a session dedicated to demonstrate our technology showing our brilliant mobile experience different clients access using HTML5 we're a native client and in the end of the demonstration we'll be showing you how it works behind the scenes parallel started originally in the parallel's desktop product and or as Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition as well where we allow you to run natively Windows applications into into Mac devices and also we have parallel's mac management for secm where we're managing Mac devices integrated with a plugin into Microsoft SCCM platform but today we'll be speaking about Remote application server you know providing uh technology like what you've seen Citrix allowing users to access applications remotely without VPN with good Performance Printing and and other use case scenarios parallels has more than 5 million customers using our you know different Technologies here just a few examples from different verticals that we have our presence today but our biggest Focus today would be into remote application server so if you haven't heard about us before in a nutshell is a technology that we deliver any Windows applications or desktops to be you know delivered to end users using a client or no client or using you know mobile devices Technologies like Android devices and iOS so pretty much when you have a Windows app or even a desktop or even in some years cases remote PCS that you need to securely allow access from home like a node Windows XP for example we can install agents and stream that securely and following your corporate security rules we leverage Microsoft RDS remote desktop services and our dsh to publish applications and one big use case that we have been seeing frequently is okay great I can do PC and Max but what about Chromebooks and Raspberry Pi's so in the past would say okay you could use our HTML5 client but nowadays we have dedicated client for those Technologies so if you're in the education business for example where you see a lot of Chromebooks you can push parallels or more application client and um and then have policies on how to connect which farm so students for example could leverage that and in other spaces Raspberry Pi is growing so you can use rasparian and have your applications delivered that way as well and applications are not installed on local clients and the whole processing of course is done on the server side when we talk about the remote application server a lot of people think about almost static applications like productivity tools and so on but the industry is changing so if you even if you have use cases where you have been hearing that I need to do voice over IP or I can you know use Skype for business this kind of use cases are supported now in most of our clients especially in the mobile client side and of course in the full client experience when we talk about the technology itself this particular chart looks a lot of information here but what is very important here the first one is the bottom where we run on major hypervisors so if you use VMware if you use hyper-v Zen server we can use your existing infrastructure but if you're starting to move towards the cloud using Azure and AWS for example we already have templates created for those Technologies and you can go to the marketplace and start deploying virtual machines from there basically we can run on any hypervisor that you need even KVM but in KVM we support today application publishing very very well when you install it the idea is to be very easy to use it comes with built-in Printing and scanning capabilities so if you use Citrix today and other third-party tools and you move to remote application server you don't need those third-party tools anymore we also work on thin clients and kiosk mode capability so we can take over for example Windows workstation and make it work as a almost like a slave station but Windows shares replaced and the applications will be running from the remote application server for the user it seems to be local on the mobile on the mobility side we have the new mobile experience different clients so if you have employees on the road they can log in into a portal very similar to what you would see in storefront but within the same browser you see during the demo you can access your applications and even use printing with one click so there's no PDF generation download and opening a file then printed it's just click once and print and when you deploy Remote application server for a POC or for an implementation you can have a basic working environment running in a couple of hours so for a proof of concept we can run everything in a single machine for production we can distribute the software packages in different you know using different modules but keep in mind we also have one touch deployment with Wizards that can push our agents to your infrastructure and when you have Citrix infrastructure we can sit side by side while you do the migration so it's great for task evaluation seamlessly move to a new platform without impact to your end users on the I.T side three things that we help a lot the it groups first one it's comprehensive security so we can data protection we can do two-factor authentication and at the same time you can combine different rules-based user and location or where they are coming from and then allowing them to access or an application or not on the scalability side we have vertical and horizontal scalability you can have multiple terminal server agents you can have multiple publishing servers or in Citrix terms as controllers and at the same time you can add multiple gateways or distribute your traffic between one data center to another and in new cases now where you have your private data center or on-premise into Cloud so it's very very flexible on how you use the scalability is more or less how do you design it for end user experience and we're cloud ready so we have customers already running on AWS and Azure and they in some cases already use a hybrid approach where they are Distributing This Server infrastructure the terminal server side will also fail over on the publishing side as well in the brilliant user experience this is a very cool thing we do Native search gestures on mobile devices while working on Windows desktop applications so we have the concept of using swipe drag magnifier and even if you use an Android client which magnifier only exists into iOS we created one for Android so it makes it easy also to click select and move things in the screen you're going to see the demo in a much easier experience and you know almost every frame and we provide a seamless user experience across all platforms our clients they look all the same and if you don't want to work on configuration and changing settings you can always use our HTML5 portal and from there you can use HTML5 or just you know engage a client without changing any configuration in the back end or even creating anyone and by default we do local peripheral redirection which means local disks USB devices camera and so on of course using policies you can have that description restriction in place in Cloud Readiness I think I mentioned this point already just to ring for us if you have use cases on Amazon web services Azure and private cloud or a combination or all of them we support them already and what is very important is you can either deploy the controller piece on-prem or in the cloud vice versa and you can decide in a very flexible way where do you want to run the components if you want more informations we have a dedicated webcast recorded on Azure and AWS requirements where we show you different use cases like overflowing traffic or just having entire infrastructure running on on you know in the codes in the cloud so the idea here is pretty much what you need to do or what you want to do on your use cases on the scalability side so it administrators can manage demands of the peak stately increasing workloads where we do instantly deploy pre-built vdi templates we leverage what we have in the hypervisor so you can use our template Management in this case we recommend you either use this Center for that and as well for hyper-v using SEC VM um you know module install that's the best way we can control the hypervisor in the template at the same time but if you are small you don't need to use Citrix PVS for example you can create new templates using the ESX server and then once they are cloned we can incorporate them automatically into our pool of virtual machines in the vdi space so we can easily add new servers gateways to scale the virtual infrastructure so depending you know locations and traffic and what your users do we can add virtual machines we do not have specific Hardwares so when we talk about gateways which is controlling the traffic terminal servers where the applications are running these are virtual machines and from a high availability load balancer which would be very similar to netscaler which Citrix has a different cost base for that we already have a built-in load balancer which is a Windows Virtual Machine so pretty much our deployment is Hardware free in terms of what you need you can always use your hypervisor for that on the security side in the demo we show a little bit more but the idea is granular permissions so you can create groups you can create application settings you can set access based upon active directory rules and gpos on top of that you can blend with a two-factor Authentication which could be using radius safe net and deep net and we identify where the client is coming from or is in the operating system they're coming from so you can allow them to access apps or restrict access on that in some use cases depending the location or group that you create you can allow disk access USB redirection scanning and printing so if users are working from home for example and you do not want them to use um any USB device to copy files or even save locally you can set that permission based upon that as well and in some use cases if you want for example use kiosk mode we also disable print screen so people work for us they might take a picture but we make a little bit more difficult for them to take screenshots um you know from you know private information and so on how do we see ourselves between us and other vendors in this case could be Citrix were much easier to deploy maintain and manage keep in mind if you have multiple versions of Windows operating systems on the server side you might need different Citrix servers controllers and storefront versions We have the same controller the same storefront if you will which is the Gateway and the same modules installed on all the same excuse me all the same Windows versions if you have all different versions of Windows you have but using our the same version of parallels or more application server keep in mind we do not need to have multiple Farms another interesting feature is we don't ask you to wait for feature packs to be released and then run Windows update you can run Windows update to re to resolve security issues or security patches and remote application server will not be affected so one far for all of your windows versions and also keeping operating system updated we're simple by Design so it it's one UI you do everything in the same UI there are you know so you don't have to think about going to a web portal or going to a client settings now go to the console and you can change all your settings there Roi we can reduce your existing Citrix cost we can you know we have a couple of scenarios here also comparing with VMware um a product line and we leverage and support Microsoft RDS and major I providers so if you want to reduce the number of vdis and use more application publishing you can also reduce your your operational cost and improve your TCL so here's one example about the TCO part where we have a thousand concurrent users how we can we show savings on Horizon from VMware and the same thing with Citrix so each case is a case so we can you know have a deeper discussion with your it and business group and identify where are the savings and how can be implemented quickly keep in mind depending on the use case not only on the TCO but the ROI can be achieved between three to six months so the the investment into Remote application server It's Quickly absorbed based upon on replacement or even new projects on application publishing delivery and what is very important now with Windows Server 2016 out we are tested and certified to run on Windows Server 2016 all versions available and you can use the same versions of Windows Server 2016 and um it can be either on promise on-premise and as well in the cloud so no worries about that in fact part of the demo today we'll be running on Windows server 2016. in the client side this is showing how it used to be and how it's the new client if you have ever heard about parallels access allowing you to you know remote access PCS and Max one-to-one relationship we leverage that technology and now we brought into Remote application server so I won't talk more about this particular topic because the demo will you know give you all of the details for that on the Windows Server 2016 just a couple of um more information about the support we tested off our all of our modules here we are called PA which is the publishing agent Citrix words or language is what we called the Citrix controller component the Gateway is where the portals are load balanced and running and as well routing uh incoming traffic like if you're using only four four E3 or https access to remote application server infrastructure that's part of the GW or here as Gateway hypervisor using the Microsoft hyper-v and our elusive agents have been tested into that platform as well vdi agent and the terminal server or remote desktop server agents what is very important in in Windows Server 2016 and as well on the remote FX protocol we're using this features a new features as well so new compression and new controllers have been introduced and we are leveraging those as well but let's go a little bit more on details on the Citrix replacement side so two big errors first one we can help is cost and the second one is complexity right so if you are stuck on older versions of Citrix and debating oh my gosh I need to install a new version of Citrix redeploy everything maybe I need to find something else that would make my job easier in the future our approach is very different than Citrix you can update and upgrade production Farms of course you schedule maintenance windows but when a new version of remote application server comes you don't have to redeploy everything you don't have to build a new farm so this is a big Point here that covers on the complexity side so let me cover first cost and then I'll get into more details on the complexity so Citrix has very expensive license costs and is modular base so depending on the tier that you are the cost per user can be higher or lower our approach here is one single license and you can use everything so you pay a subscription fee or if you have in this plot business the supply monthly user consumption and you have access to all remote application server components second point from Citrix is they have very expensive recurring costs of Maintenance and support Citrix recently have changed their maintenance costs and support they went up so you know that will be Pro you know big problem for you to to maintain the infrastructure or is it significantly lower compared to Citrix and if you're in the bigger tiers even even even you know cheaper and on the implementation side in maintenance that's very difficult a lot of you know use cases you know Citrix convince customers I need to use PVS to make my job easier creating templates for vdi but at the same time every upgrade is very complicated it's highly tactically training resources needed all the time and a simple maintenance can turn into a big job specifically when we talk about upgrades and patching installation so we do auto updates if you need on the client side and on the server side at the same time we make it easier for for an existing it administrator to deploy and manage Remote application server majority you know of stories that I can tell in comparison is there are a lot of small customers today using parallels Remote application server where they don't have a dedicated Citrix administrator was too expensive for them so we use our own you know they they use their own I.T director or I.T person to that you know handles us Windows servers and email and so on to handle remote application server so they can you know be a shared resource and management and administration in Citrix as we know is it's a very complicated and hard to to do you need a lot of certifications and I.T knowledge we have wizards to simplify the process and we can also provide training for administrator keep in mind we provide a monthly certification training which is free you can just watch and then go for our certification process to become you know a remote application server specialist complexity we talk about some of those about different access points different licenses it needs to have you know database resiliency so you might think you have a high availability environment but you also need to have a high availability database infrastructure in the back end and upgrades can be very very complex and very slow moving from one version to another so when we talk about you know Citrix replacement three steps we have install parallels Remote application server in your farm push the terminal server the RDS clients and published applications to the intent users you can create groups you know leveraging user you know user groups from accurate directory it's automatically implemented the integration and if you want to have you know more information we have several case studies I have two of them here where we replace Citrix and the word Simplicity comes across all the time so we talk about easy to use cost Effectiveness and the second one here we can see we solve the performance and connectivity problems and very important things it has been done in in a matter of five to ten days it was not a project it took several several months with that being said I think it's time for us to move to our technical demonstration so let's connect to the iPad now and open the parallels client and connect to the demo environment once connected we can pick the applications that are you know pre-populated here by application groups or rows and we view open Microsoft Excel on Windows Server 2016. once the application is open we will leverage the new features we have which is it's in our magnifier where we can identify pixel by pixel what you have in the app and use the function that you have in the app in this case the chart make it bigger or smaller I can pick a specific cell for example number five and then change the settings so I can just tap and use the magnifier to select precisely and change dynamically the content as you can see the number five changing colors and also we can send this particular output to a printer so let's say I want to send this to my printer which is in my iPad send to print and we'll use the parallels printer driver The Parallel Sprinter driver replaces the PDF export that you would have to export download open and print here with one click printing action you're sending to to your printer very very simple the same effect happens on the HTML5 client which we'll be seeing in a couple of minutes the second important component I want to showcase in the iOS experience and Android as well it is the app launcher and as you can see here when you tap on the the button that it's highlighted in red we can see the application already open let's say now I open another Excel file let's say my personal expenses create and when I launched the app launcher now I can see both applications and I can toggle between one and another but let's say I want to introduce another application and in this case I want to open Word sharing the same desktop experience I have word now open you know open a new blank document say hi there and the app launcher now is showing you the other application as well and let's say I want to go back to my original Excel spreadsheet tap here and voila the you know the transition is very very simple I'm using an Apple keyboard but if I want to leverage specific function keys I can just close my keyboard here and use the native keyboard interaction and I can use f keys for example or even you know arrows or even a home and uh HR page down that you see in a normal keyboard a lot of people think this is is a regular iOS keyboard but in reality this is coming from our client interaction between user and the application itself another big aspect to show you here is if I want to use a full Windows 10 type of experience in my tablet so I can go back to my app launcher and launch a virtual desktop and we're in the process to launch a Windows 10 session here where we can see a Windows 10 experience and in this case I think using the mouse would be easier for me so I can click on the gear use the mouse pointer and now I can use a left and click feature buttons as you can see here on the desktop so it can you know the same thing that I did before open Microsoft Word open an application and interact with that another interesting feature that we have here in the desktop if it's click on the the gear you see that the microphone is open we can use applications now with bi-direct no audio and if you have the use case of Skype for business this could be a use case for that so let's disconnect and switch the demo now to the HTML5 client experience so going back to my desktop I can come here to my Chrome browser and here I can I already logged in but I can see the same look and feel on the application side and if I double click on Microsoft Office and right click on Excel I have now the option to either choose the client or the HTML5 client experience HTML5 client does not require any software installed on your computer which is great when you're traveling so when the application is launched like see the same application look and feel I can open my DB in business again let's use a read-only view and uh one thing that I wanted to highlight which is very important is if you're collect in file print it does not generate PDF like in the mobile client it will use the same powerless printer driver and now we will interact with the local printer that we have on my Mac here is the output in one click printing as well another feature we have in the portal is here the task list or the task applications that you have if you open more than one you can switch between back and forth like a virtual desktop so I maximize the app here and I can click on the DNB again switch back and forth the x button is an actual x button that will be closing the app clicking on the X it closes the app very seamless now if I want to use richer experience like local disk access or even scanner or better compression because the connectivity is not so great because the internet is not working great in a hotel we can right click over here and use the parallels client and now we'll be connecting to My Demo environment like I did before and I carried my sessions from the iPad client to client because a similar resolution and here I can see my Excel and my word document here if I minimize they will become icons on my desktop and once I close them they will be either saved or the information can be locally saved or saved on the cloud it's up to to the user or the administrator to the side and the last part of this demonstration I wanted to share a little bit more about the back end on the console side we have done significant improvements in the farm level when we talk about publishing agents now we have the active active publishing agents where you have more than two that can be acting as a production environment Distributing the load this resolves two problems one of them is in the past we had a active passive load balancer on the publishing agent that was manually changed now it's automatic and now we automatically distribute the load and performance between different publishing agents so the publishing agents they're talking to each other every x amount of seconds and if they are controlling independently and talking about who is connected what applications they have in case one of those publishing agents fails Hardware VM is not available run out of disk space or whatever the other publishing agents will automatically pick up the load and redistribute so the users will not be disconnected and if they get disconnected because of internet connectivity issues they will be reconnected to the session that they have saved the second piece that have been improved which I showed you visually the HTML5 Gateway is the ability now that you can determine what kind of experience the portal will act so the first one is only HTML5 like we had in version 15.0 only launching the Carlos client which was a very specific feature of the web portal which you do not have to use it anymore you can use HTML5 guide Gateway only launching Barlow's clients or what I already have showed you before which is the parallels client with the fallback feature again is important here the gateways are now load balance using our Hub and this information now it's configured here in the Gateway payload and the SSL payload where we add this different gateways and we are Distributing Gateway traffic automatically on the policy side very important features is related to printing in the connection properties now here in experience we have the universal printing compression policy that works based upon connection speed Auto Discovery we're measuring metering in real time or you can change different settings between you know user groups or Gateway access and so on but we recommend customers now to use based on connection speed and then we determine the best way to compress it the same feature is now introduced into the universal scanning compression policies so you can leverage that out and make it you know printing faster and more reliable and scanning of course on the licensing side now we introduce where we show you for example what is the account that you have the license activated and for Splat customers you can use the same license key for multiple farms and every day that information it's handed over to parallels my account we have a few YouTube videos showing how parallels my account works but essentially we are taking a snapshot every day of peak and rolling that up to my account we resolve a big problem in the licensing count up to version 15 if you had two users let's say user one connected one from the iPad another one from a PC we used to consider them that as two counts of concurrent user in version 15.5 that has been resolved and if you have two user ones connected from a parallels Remote application server perspective it's only one license count on the reporting side we have improved the performance and the loading where you can now see broader time frame of the reports in this case I'm showing you like the last seven days of application usage the loading process is much much quicker and here in the user activity I actually put a much longer time frame showing from end of June all the way to today how um you know the users have been accessed with active times idle times and disconnect times so basically we have done a lot of those improvements that are under the hood but making sure the product is much more scalable and now reliable for larger environments