Parallels Desktop for Enterprise: Feature Walkthrough

Hello everyone! My name is Alex Padsley. I'm a Senior Director of Product Management for Parallels Desktop. Thank you for joining us. I'm excited to share information about our product and what's coming in 2026. Parallels Desktop for Enterprise is designed specifically for organizations to manage all aspects of virtualization, including security and compliance. But first, let's talk about the core use case, running Windows applications on a Mac using virtualization technology. Let's quickly refresh what Parallels Desktop and on-device virtualizations are. When you see a Windows application on your Mac's screen, a lot needs to happen in the background. Parallels Desktop acts as a bridge between macOS and another operating system, like Windows, to run legacy applications. It's almost like magic, but really just a lot of technology from Parallels, Apple and Microsoft working together. Apple provides frameworks for virtualization, enabling Windows to run in a fast and secure environment, with additional macOS frameworks to help Parallels implement essential system functions, camera, sound, networking, file operations and more. This all happens locally on the Mac. No server, no cloud, no extra infrastructure required, just the Mac hardware you already have to run Windows applications. And a common question that we often hear is, can Windows applications that were built for Intel really run on Apple Silicon? The fact is that the best performance comes from virtualizing the same architecture. That's why we use Windows for ARM on ARM Macs to run Windows applications. What does a lot of heavy lifting is an emulation layer inside Windows, developed by Microsoft and called Prism. It's been optimized for years to provide this level of compatibility between architectures. In practice, this means that applications that you rely on, they run as expected without modifications or special configurations. Let's take a look at a couple of examples. Here's SolidWorks running on the Mac with help of Parallels Desktop. SolidWorks is a versatile CAD application, widely used in mechanical engineering, product design and industrial manufacturing. Here's Power BI, a leading business analytics tool, widely used for data visualization and reporting in fields like finance, operations and data science. Here is Microsoft Excel running on the Mac with Parallels Desktop, including full support for visual basic macros. This is critical for advanced workflows like financial modeling, automation and integration with tools such as Bloomberg terminal plugins. Many switchers also prefer the familiar Windows Excel interface for compatibility with complex spreadsheets and enterprise templates. So we've established that applications for Windows run on the Mac using Parallels Desktop. Now, how do you deliver those applications to your users with Parallels Desktop for enterprise? Deployment and activation of Parallels Desktop can be fully automated through MDM using Jamf App Catalog and built-in configuration profiles. The app is delivered to the device and Parallels activates automatically in the background with the license key without any input from the user. If you're using SSO, you can enforce an SSO-based experience to activate the application. Once Parallels Desktop is deployed, the next challenge is to deliver Windows OS in a virtual machine. Golden Images let you create and pre-configure a trusted Windows baseline with the right applications, settings and enrollment. Instead of supporting dozens of unique environments, you maintain one reference image and deploy it to anyone who needs it. This significantly reduces support overhead and ensures every user starts from a secure consistent configuration. For end-users, setting up this VM takes just one click to download and install it. To further simplify Windows provisioning with Intune enrollment, you can use declarative deployment for Golden Images. You can instruct Parallels Desktop to download Windows from Microsoft, skip the out-of-the-box experience for your users and apply a provisioning package to enroll Windows into Intune. With Intune, you can then deploy the applications your team needs. This provides a truly zero-touch Windows deployment to Macs that many customers are asking for. Okay, so you deliver Parallels Desktop and Windows with the applications that you need to your users, but what about managing these endpoints? Parallels Desktop for Enterprise fits perfectly to answer that question. With Parallels Desktop for Enterprise, you can control how Windows apps integrate with macOS, enforce security policies to restrict virtual machine creation, monitor the usage of the virtual machines, and even encrypt them. You are keeping the benefit of on-device virtualization without compromising the security of your environment. One of the frameworks that we use with customers is Levels of Control, so you can choose exactly how much freedom or governance to apply while managing your users and their virtual machines. Some organizations stop at controlling who can work with Parallels Desktop. Others go all the way to enroll Windows into Intune with golden images and control what and how users can run. There are different options on each level, and understanding where you fall within this framework helps focus on what's needed for your use case. After you've provisioned a virtual machine, one of the most common questions that we hear is how to keep Windows up to date if you're not managing it directly. If Windows isn't patched, the VM becomes a security gap, even when the Mac itself is fully up to date. This is where integration with Parallels Desktop and your macOS MDM makes a real difference. Using Jamf and extension attributes and Parallels Desktop, you can automate the Windows update process from your existing macOS management workflows. You can monitor which VMs have Windows updates pending and trigger and install those updates even if the VM hasn't been opened for some time. Virtual machines have multiple configuration options to enable Windows apps to function effectively. For example, things like network access, or shared clipboard, or connections to external devices. However, in some environments, you may want to disable some of these capabilities by enforcing these settings remotely using our policy engine. This ensures that every user has the same configuration and changes can be applied even after the deployment, without interrupting users or recreating the images. Another way to secure corporate data when allowing virtualization is to enforce encryption of virtual machines and bind them to your corporate Parallels subscription. This ensures that any virtual machine with access to your network can only run within your organization. If it's copied or taken out of your control, it simply won't start. Encryption is managed centrally through Parallels policies, making it easier for you to secure all VMs in a consistent way. Lastly, in Parallels Management Portal, you can view which virtual machines are active, the last use date, Windows version, and device IDs to track them across different enterprise systems. And if a VM is compromised or no longer compliant with company policies, you can remotely delete it, ensuring that no institutional data is exposed. As you can see, Parallels Desktop for Enterprise is already a full-featured product that lets you deploy and manage virtual machines on your users' Macs at scale. But we have a lot more in store coming later this year and beyond. Our vision is to hide as much of the complexity of virtualization as possible from your users, so you can focus on what matters most. We understand the need to deliver applications that are not available on macOS, and this continues to guide our product direction. Many of the features that we are planning and actively developing are designed to support this goal, simplifying deployment and management of applications and virtual machines, reducing the burden of Windows maintenance and updates, and delivering a seamless user experience that keeps users productive on their Macs with Parallels Desktop. Thank you very much for your time. Feel free to reach out to either your representative or to the product team if you have any questions. Goodbye!