AaaS Application as a Service | ISVs and SPs Hints | Parallels
Last updated on May 24, 2021
AaaS Application-as-a-Service – Companies are becoming increasingly interested in solutions that offer a subscription-based pricing model to satisfy their IT needs while staying within budget. This has caused the continued growth of Application as a Service (AaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. This is one opportunity that independent software vendors (ISVs) and service providers (SPs) should not be missing.
What is Application as a Service?
Synonymous with SaaS, AaaS is a type of service where applications are delivered on-demand through the Internet and charged to consumers based on usage or a per month or yearly basis.
Unlike traditional applications installed on devices, applications in AaaS are hosted on a server, managed by whoever is doing the hosting and delivered remotely to the user’s device. As it is server-hosted, all updates, configurations and security measures for that particular application are applied on the server instead of each endpoint device.
All these attributes have huge implications from a user and business perspective.
Benefits of Using Application as a Service
End users gain the flexibility to work anywhere without compromising corporate data. Even if their device is stolen, the corporate data they’ve been accessing from that device remains safely stored on the server—no amount of breaking into the device’s local storage can compromise the data in question.
For IT, the managed nature of an AaaS application eliminates the time, energy and workforce required to manage, maintain and secure locally installed applications. And if the server that hosts the application is on a major public cloud like Amazon Web Services™ (AWS), Azure or Google Cloud, that application instantly acquires additional capabilities like scalability, high availability and global reach—all with minimal effort from IT.
Lastly, for businesses, the reduced burden on IT could translate to lower administrative costs and greater opportunities to pursue innovative projects. Additionally, the increased flexibility of employees and the ability to work from the office, home, a café, an airport or a train can improve the overall productivity of the organization. This could, in turn, lead to faster project completions and time-to-market.
Challenges of Implementing Application as a Service
To turn a regular application into an Application as a Service, you need to perform extensive refactoring on it. That would mean rewriting large portions of its code and restructuring its database.
Second, you need to incorporate provisions for high availability, such as load balancing. That’s because, once you start making your AaaS available to a large user base, there are times when your service faces a surge in traffic.
Third, the AaaS has to support as many endpoint devices and platforms as possible. This usually means you’ll have to develop client applications not only for Windows, Linux and Mac but also Android and iOS (because younger generations prefer using mobile devices).
And fourth, it must also be able to support public cloud deployments. Large public cloud platforms like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud already have the infrastructure to efficiently support high levels of availability, scalability and global reach. If you have a large, globally distributed user base, a cloud deployment would certainly contribute to success.
There are several other challenges, but these are the major ones. Let me now introduce a solution that can simplify AaaS adoption.
Simplify AaaS with Parallels RAS
There’s a way to implement an AaaS initiative while avoiding the entire refactoring. You can use Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS), a virtual application and desktop delivery solution that allows you to virtualize any application, including legacy line-of-business (LOB) applications and deliver them to endpoints without requiring any refactoring whatsoever.
Parallels RAS already comes with built-in high availability load balancing (HALB) capabilities that effectively distribute workloads between Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) servers, Parallels RAS Gateway servers and other infrastructure components. With this load balancing mechanism, you can significantly decrease the risk of downtime. Parallels RAS supports AWS Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), which further improves its high availability abilities in the AWS cloud.
Speaking of clouds, Parallels RAS supports public cloud deployments to Azure and AWS, as well as on-premises, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and even hybrid or multi-cloud deployments. In other words, you can launch your Application as a Service from practically any cloud infrastructure.
Last but not least, Parallels RAS is fully capable of delivering its virtual applications to any device. That’s because the Parallels RAS client can run on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Chromebook and any HTML5 web browser.
How ISVs and SPs can benefit from AaaS
Parallels RAS is a perfect match for ISVs and SPs who wish to add AaaS to their portfolio. Also, Parallels RAS has a bunch of other features that can help ISVs and SPs provide a top-notch, highly profitable AaaS offering. Some of those features include:
- PowerShell and REST APIs for integration and automation
- Client customizations for white labeling
- Multi-tenancy architecture for serving multiple organizations on one infrastructure
- Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) support for secure single sign-on (SSO) and identity management
- Auto-provisioning and auto-scaling capabilities
Parallels RAS has even put together programs specially designed for ISVs and MSPs/SPs who are interested in providing a highly profitable AaaS offering.
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