3 Areas Managed IT Service Providers Should Focus On | Parallels Insights

By Vissarion Yfantis

September 10, 2019
Last updated on January 13, 2022

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Significantly improved reliability, affordability, and accessibility of cloud infrastructures are propelling managed IT service providers or Managed Service (MSPs) to add Desktop as a Service (DaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) to their menu of services. However, there are a few challenges. Having spoken with several MSPs who already offer DaaS and SaaS, we’ve identified three key areas vital for success.

1. High Availability with Any Device, Anywhere Access

With more employees now seeking the ability to work remotely, managed IT service providers must provide businesses with solutions that have access from any device, anywhere access capabilities to maintain market competitiveness. This would allow remote workers and telecommuters to remain productive wherever they went.

2. Total Cost of Ownership

When picking a solution, you should always include TCO as a significant consideration. As a managed IT service provider, your finances are already spread thinly across a wide range of expenses: staffing, training, customer support, third-party licenses, and an assortment of administrative overheads. If your delivery solution only inflates those expenses, it wouldn’t be sustainable.

3. Security and Compliance

In this day and age, many customers are governed by laws and regulations such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, which require high levels of security. Unless you’re able to assure customers of your capability to secure their processes and digital assets, there’s a good chance they’ll take their business elsewhere.

There’s one solution that can help managed IT service providers address the needs of these three areas, especially when providing DaaS and SaaS services. It’s called Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS).

Why Parallels RAS is Ideal for Managed IT Service Providers

• Load balancing: Parallels RAS comes with built-in load balancing capabilities that allow it to provide high availability to SaaS and DaaS and reduce the risk of downtime.
• Deployment options: Parallels RAS supports various deployment options that include public clouds like AWS and Azure. When deployed on any of these large cloud providers, Parallels RAS can take advantage of their highly available, global infrastructure and, in turn, seamlessly deliver desktops and applications anywhere.
• Simple Licensing: Parallels RAS licensing, which costs much less than similar products like Citrix and VMware, makes it easy to acquire. Combine that with its ease of deployment and single-pane-of-glass management—all of which allow MSPs to avoid expensive training or new talent—and Parallels RAS amounts to a considerably low TCO compared to other options.
• Security: Parallels RAS is accompanied by several security features that ensure data protection and regulatory compliance. The way its application, desktop, and data delivery method has been architected, wherein none of the digital assets are stored on the endpoint devices themselves, minimizes the risk of data loss and malware infection. Add to that other features like TLS, FIPS 140-2 encryption, multi-factor authentication, Kiosk Mode, and others, and MSPs can serve their customers with confidence.

Take a look at the Parallels Partner Program if you are a managed IT service provider looking to streamline your services while keeping TCO low and management simplified.