"One of our employees that worked with Citrix in the past is now very happy that we’ve installed Parallels Secure Workspace, as he can now work at home without having to install anything!"

Frederic Van Quickenborne
IT Manager, die Keure

Printer and publisher, die Keure, uses Parallels Secure Workspace to give their employees and external parties secure access to internal business applications whilst paving their way towards GDPR compliance.

They chose Parallels Secure Workspace’s unified workspace for its cost-efficiency and simplicity compared to more expensive and complicated solutions such as Citrix. Moreover, die Keure appreciated how easy it is to implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) with the solution.

With nearly a century in the business, die Keure sits at the top of the printing world and is a leading player in the Belgian publishing landscape. Their strength lies in their craftsmanship and experience, together with their constant striving for superior quality.

They work with educational institutions that are using both print and digital learning methods, such as smartboards. Furthermore, die Keure is also works with different professionals such as lawyers, notaries, accountants, and tax specialists.

The challenge

Over the course of the last few years, the IT environment within the publishing house has changed drastically due to continuous digitalization and the road towards compliance with several regulations like GDPR.

”The company faces many challenges in working together with their clients and partners in a secure way,” says Frederic Van Quickenborne (IT Manager, die Keure), “which was one of the reasons to look into secure and easy to use collaboration tools.”

They are working with publishers, suppliers, authors, editors and many other external parties. The people at those companies need to have access to some of die Keure’s files and applications in a secure and simple manner.

When looking for ways to tackle this challenge, they were convinced of Parallels Secure Workspace’s wide range of capabilities since it was introducedi by their IT partner Keep-IT.

The solution

As described by Keep-IT, Parallels Secure Workspace is a very simple and quick solution for giving internal people access to business applications when they work from home. What’s more, there are external parties who can now use internal applications in a secure way without requiring a direct data transfer between their device and the die Keure servers.

Initially, the main drivers of implementing Parallels Secure Workspace at die Keure were twofold. First, they were looking for a replacement for their complicated Citrix setup. Second, the out-of-the-box MFA capabilities helped them to continue their efforts towards securing their environment.

The current usage of Parallels Secure Workspace has grown beyond the initial scope: the employees of die Keure are also using the unified workspace to connect to a server at lightning speed and without changing the network for tasks ranging from a quick consult of their documents to working with their applications for an extended amount of time.

There are a number of employees that need to work with applications that only run on the Windows OS. Since the company introduced Parallels Secure Workspace, they can work with these tools and applications from any device, including MacBooks and Chromebooks.

In the future, the unified workspace can also be used for other use-cases within die Keure.

The IT department is currently investigating ways to enhance secure file sharing with Parallels Secure Workspace, which has a built-in functionality to easily and securely share files with both internal and external recipients.

Furthermore, using Parallels Secure Workspace has opened up the option of replacing terminals with Chromebooks from which users can log in to the server. This would be a highly cost-efficient future investment.

The results

  • Citrix replacement: Implementing Parallels Secure Workspace helped die Keure to make their digital workplace more cost-efficient and a lot easier to manage and use. According to Frederic Van Quickenborne (IT Manager, die Keure), one of the primary benefits of Parallels Secure Workspace over Citrix is the fact that users don’t have to install anything on their device to get to work — something that has saved a lot of time and effort in support tickets.
  • Cost-efficiency: Besides its budget-friendly pricing, Parallels Secure Workspace has opened up the option of replacing terminals with Chromebooks from which users can log in to the server, which would be a highly cost-efficient investment.
  • Compliance: Parallels Secure Workspace’s security features, e.g., the out-of-the-box MFA, helped the IT environment on the road towards compliance with several regulations, such as GDPR. “The company faces many challenges in working together with their clients and partners in a secure way,” says Frederic Van Quickenborne (IT Manager, die Keure), “which was one of the reasons to look into secure and easy to use collaboration tools.”
  • Collaboration: die Keure is working together with publishers, suppliers, authors, editors and many other external parties. The people at those companies need to have access to many of die Keure’s files and applications in a secure and simple way. Parallels Secure Workspace is a very simple and fast solution to giving internal people access to business applications when they work from home on the one hand. In addition, there are external parties who can now use internal applications in a secure way without requiring a direct data transfer between their device and die Keure’s servers.
  • Any device: Parallels Secure Workspace users at die Keure worked on a wide variety of devices and operating systems, ranging from Windows laptops to Chromebooks to Macbooks. Parallels Secure Workspace is device agnostic; all you need is a browser (on any kind of device or OS) and you’re good to go!
  • Secure file sharing: To rid themselves of “the WeTransfers of this world”, die Keure started using Parallels Secure Workspace’s secure file sharing, which has a built-in functionality to easily and securely share files with both internal and external recipients.

"Parallels Secure Workspace made sure that we did not have to perform a complex installation on client computers, only an HTML5 browser is needed to get started."

Koen Praet
CEO, Keep-IT

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