Parallels RAS vs Citrix: What Should You Choose?

The coronavirus pandemic upended the traditional workplace, forcing many companies to close their physical doors and shift to remote work environments. Remote work isn’t new, but it’s increasingly accepted as a long-term option instead of an occasional perk. According to Survey of Business Uncertainty (SBU) results, the number of work-from-home days is anticipated to triple after the pandemic ends.

Hybrid work arrangements often require organizations to deploy virtualization technology in order to adequately support distributed teams. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) allows employees to access their desktops, applications, and resources from anywhere, at any time. VDI solutions host these resources on a central server, which then is accessed securely by authenticated users. Remote access solutions allow employees to access their data, applications and virtual desktops securely from anywhere, at any time.

While Citrix products are well-known solutions for desktop and application virtualization, they can present challenges that complicate remote access—namely, complex license models, high pricing, and complicated infrastructure. These challenges can affect both employee productivity and your company’s bottom line. With their high price tags and considerable installation and configuration time, Citrix products may cause unnecessary strain on businesses already feeling the financial impact caused by COVID-19.

When the pandemic ends, most companies will continue to provide some form of remote work option. A combination of on-site and remote employees creates a more complex, hybrid workforce. This makes it critical to have the right technology in place—technology that both meets your current needs and will support future requirements.

Numerous organizations suffered revenue losses in 2020, but the right VDI solution can be a simple way to boost business in 2021 through enhanced remote work capabilities. In this article, we’ll explain why Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) is an ideal alternative to Citrix when it comes to choosing a virtualization solution.

Faster, Easier Installation and Deployment

A complete Citrix virtualization solution requires the installation and maintenance of multiple components. For example, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops has one or more delivery controllers, multiple servers (e.g., Studio, StoreFront, License), and one or more Virtual Delivery Agents (VDAs).

Because many Citrix products are interrelated, your organization may need to purchase multiple components to keep your systems running. Each product requires a separate configuration. In addition, system administrators must receive specialized training to install, deploy and manage a Citrix infrastructure.

This can increase management efforts, slow the onboarding process and hinder the implementation of new functionalities. The alternative is to hire third-party Citrix specialists—not a small expenditure.

Parallels RAS takes the complexity out of the software environment. Its simplified architecture doesn’t require specialized training or specialists to install, deploy and manage it. Teams can deliver applications and desktops in hours instead of days using a simple, wizard-driven installation. The time saved installing and launching your VDI solution not only saves money on IT expenditures but also provides more time to spend on business-critical tasks.

Ease of deployment reduces IT complexity. Automated processes reduce time spent on repetitive tasks. Parallels even provides free comprehensive training courses to enhance your organization’s IT skills and reduce the time needed to configure and manage desktop clients.

The entire Parallels RAS infrastructure can be deployed and configured centrally. This makes it easy to scale your resource pool when your organization brings on new employees or when you want to shift workloads between remote and in-office work environments. Parallels RAS auto-scaling and auto-provisioning features will automatically adjust the number of hosts running a workload based on demand, optimizing your resource usage.

Simple, All-In-One License Pricing

Citrix offers different subscription models for on-premises and cloud services. The monthly price-per-user average depends on the total number of acquired licenses. To start, you must select from a range of Citrix products.

For example, if you only need to virtualize applications, there’s Citrix Virtual Apps. If you need to build a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), then you might select Citrix Virtual Desktops. For a complete virtualization solution, there’s Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. Each product has multiple editions (e.g., Standard, Advanced, Premium) and license models. This means that Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops requires separate licensing fees.

There’s no all-in-one license for a Citrix environment. Certain features, such as load-balancing functionality, are a hidden cost because they are not included in the base package. Even cloud deployment options span from basic to premium services, and only the most expensive edition will support on-premises or hybrid Virtual Apps and Desktops workloads fully. All of this means that a Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop setup can cost up to 60% more than Parallels RAS per year.

Parallels uses concurrent user licensing. The license cost depends only on how many users will connect to the environment. This means an entire team can establish any number of connections to Parallels RAS so long as the number of simultaneous users doesn’t exceed the number of available licenses.

In addition, Parallels RAS requires a minimum of only 15 users, compared to the 25-user minimum for Citrix. Because usage numbers don’t need to be monitored closely, concurrent user licensing simplifies IT administration.

The Parallels RAS single-license model comes with all available features, giving organizations out-of-the-box capabilities without hidden fees. It includes everything you need in a VDI solution, including load balancing, user-session monitoring, printing redirection, and reporting.

An all-inclusive license also eliminates the need to pay extra for expensive third-party add-ons. This allows companies to build a scalable virtualization solution without having to analyze numerous products and editions to find what best fits their requirements. When scaling up, the only thing you pay for is additional user licenses and hardware. Other software components used to scale the setup (e.g., gateways, load balancers) aren’t limited by Parallels RAS licensing.

Our all-inclusive yearly subscription model makes services more affordable, enabling you to leverage your VDI solution immediately. With Parallels RAS, organizations can run workloads over public cloud providers and on-premises infrastructure without having to sift through complex subscription models and feature options.

Better User Experience

Slow login times, frozen applications, and confusing error messages—these are common issues found in some VDI solutions that can add up to a poor user experience (UX). Citrix’s complex infrastructure means that a problem in one component can affect other elements easily, including the user interface. The root cause of an issue can be difficult to pinpoint because one problem can be caused by several misconfigurations throughout the infrastructure.

The source of an issue could be client-side or server-side, in one of the main Citrix components or in a supporting component. For example, the cause of a Citrix remote desktop that isn’t launching could be missing certificates, unopened firewall ports, receivers with non-elevated permissions or numerous other issues. In many cases, you have no choice but to seek help from certified (and expensive) Citrix specialists.

Recurring UX issues can negatively impact your end users, who may resist using your VDI solution. Downtime can be costly when you factor in the time spent by IT staff troubleshooting various problems and the number of frustrated end users impacted by lags or interruptions. A recent study found that the cost of downtime for important applications could be over $67,000 per hour.

Parallels RAS provides an outstanding user experience on any device, anywhere, at any time. End users can access applications and data from most operating systems and platform. This includes Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, iPadOS, Android, Chromebook, HTML5 web access, and thin clients. Whether working in-office or remotely, your employees will have consistent access to internal applications and resources without needing to download applications or customize settings on their preferred devices.

Parallels RAS includes built-in user-session monitoring, which helps organizations ensure an optimal user experience. Monitoring and reporting tools help administrators collect information about UX metrics, such as login durations, logon breakdowns, network latency, remote host response-times or the number of reconnects. This proactive approach to user sessions helps administrators respond to incidents faster and enhance the performance of their Parallels RAS deployment.

Enhanced Data Security

A successful VDI solution requires robust data security. Critical flaws in system networks or security systems can compromise your company’s assets, a lesson that many Citrix Systems clients learned firsthand in February 2020. Citrix disclosed that from October 2018 to March 2019, hackers infiltrated its networks, stealing business documents and personal and financial data.

With Parallels RAS, your employees can access corporate resources from a secure datacenter. This protects your assets from data leakage and suspicious activity. Security challenges presented by bring your own device (BYOD) are managed easily with granular permission policies, such as advanced access control and multifactor authentication.

The intuitive Parallels RAS dashboard allows you to monitor and manage all devices from a central interface, and the administrator can enforce policies to secure corporate data based on specific users, end-user devices, and more.

Making the Switch to Parallels RAS

Many of our customers are pleased to learn that Parallels RAS is easier to use and costs less than Citrix products. Even better, Parallels RAS can be up and running in hours (rather than weeks or even months), requires less management and maintenance, and you can easily scale the infrastructure to meet user demand and traffic requirements. It’s one less IT headache you have to endure. The cost and time savings can be spent on high-value tasks to help get your company back on track to success after the financial strain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

All Parallels RAS features are included in a single edition, with no hidden costs or expensive add-ons. As an all-in-one solution, Parallels RAS helps you save resources, reduce the hardware footprint, and lower overhead costs. When it comes to remote work and distributed teams, Parallels RAS is an obvious choice for delivering an outstanding user experience while reducing your total cost of ownership.

Want to experience the difference for yourself? Download a free 30-day trial of Parallels RAS to experience simple virtual application and desktop delivery.