Last updated on August 17, 2021
Platform Housing Group Ltd Achieves Significant Cost Savings with Parallels RAS
About Platform Housing Group
Platform Housing Group is one of the largest housing associations in the Midlands, United Kingdom, with around 1,200 staff, over 120,000 customers and 45,000 homes. It is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and adults within the communities they work in.
The Challenge
A few years ago, the Platform Housing Group chose to further its growth by merging with another housing group. While the merger was a success, they initially experienced challenges combining IT infrastructures. The organization that they were unifying with had a networked computer system with most resources installed locally rather than distributed over a network.
Their infrastructure, being a combination of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, had drawbacks. While they were satisfied with the capabilities of Citrix, they reported that their biggest complaints were the overly complicated maintenance required as well as the high price tag. Knowing that other solutions were available, the IT team began to explore alternatives.
The Solution
While the Platform Housing Group’s IT leaders had not heard of Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) before, they discovered the product while searching for alternatives. It offered the same services as their Citrix solution, but at a better price point. This, combined with the good reviews and many respected organizations already using Parallels, was enough to convince the IT team it was worth trying. After exploring the demo version, the team knew they had found a winner.
Beyond the affordability, Parallels RAS is a comprehensive solution that comes loaded with features. When the IT team wanted more flexibility, they appreciated Parallels RAS’s functions that Citrix lacked, such as the HTML5 gateway that would allow users to launch and work with published applications inside an HTML5-enabled web browser. Additional features such as High Availability Load Balancing, granular filtering and multi-factor authentication have increased their IT systems’ security and redundancy.
Both the finance team and the housing management team of Platform Housing Group appreciated that Parallels RAS could publish their essential applications. Currently, Parallels RAS helps them to publish SDS Proval, IPOS, Capita Open housing, Swordfish. DRS, Microsoft Office and local files shared on the network.
“Prior to implementing Parallels RAS, our organization utilized Citrix Virtual Apps and Terminal Server (2012). We also looked at VMware Horizon, but the level of features offered by Parallels and the simplicity, ease of building it, and the fact we could implement the technology on our own encouraged us to proceed with Parallels RAS. We are very pleased to have chosen such a quality solution.”
The Results
Parallels RAS has allowed users to be more flexible in the way they work. With the previous solution, users had to first access terminal servers, then an additional Citrix screen. With Parallels, they can access apps from a central location instead of opening many different screens, thus simplifying a major cause of confusion for the end-users.
Parallels RAS has an excellent user experience–users don’t realize they are accessing their applications through the server. With Parallels RAS, the housing group now has monitoring and reporting capabilities that monitor the performance and resource usage of components on the system. Parallels RAS has been a massive help for Platform Housing Group to centralize their users’ different management consoles into one system that can be pushed to their users. Single sign-on (SSO) works as designed, and users can securely log in once and access services without re-entering authentication factors.
While it is tough to calculate the exact figures, the housing group knows they have saved money across the board with Parallels RAS. Aside from the affordable licensing plans, the housing group could find savings to overhead costs and reduce resources spent on backend support and management support. They have also reduced time troubleshooting for users and managing servers. With their prior solution, they had more than 50 servers; now they have reduced that number to 20.
As a non-profit, the savings achieved by implementing Parallels RAS affect more than just their bottom line. Resources saved by switching to Parallels allow the housing group to invest in more properties and provide more people with places to live.
About Parallels
Parallels is a global leader in virtual desktop, application delivery and mobile device management solutions. Thousands of organizations worldwide trust in the reliability and scalability of Parallels virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and virtualization solutions. Parallels makes it simple and affordable to deliver applications to any device over the cloud, or with on-premises and hybrid deployments. The company’s solution portfolio includes the award-winning Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS), providing platform-independent virtual desktop, application delivery and integrated thin-client management from a unified interface to any modern operating system.
