Kansas Children's Service League has chosen Parallels RAS

Kansas Children’s Service League :“[The Parallels product] is easy to use and easy to manage. The #1 benefit in deploying Parallels is time savings.” Dave Ruff, Kansas Children’s Service League

Kansas Children’s Service League – Company Overview

For over 110 years the Kansas Children’s Service League has been giving its best to Kansas kids. Its early work, much like today, centered on finding homes for abandoned, abused, neglected or orphaned children. This stemmed from a then-radical belief that children grew up best in family homes, not in orphanages or homes for wayward children. Today the League continues its efforts in education and prevention as well as helping kids who need a home. It is the statewide contractor for adoption services and sponsors a network of resource family foster homes delivering care and support to some of Kansas’ most vulnerable children.

The Challenge

KCSL’s servers are located in the Topeka Office and support 32 offices statewide. Their databases and applications are mainly installed on the terminal servers in Topeka. The information that they gather in their databases is required to document the needs of the clients that they serve, and the progress that is made by their social workers.

Initially KCSL used Microsoft Terminal Server, now commonly known as Remote Desktop Services (RDS). They customized remote desktop shortcuts that were copied individually to each user’s desktop as a need for a specific application was identified. The cost incurred was for the terminal server licenses and the time spent creating the individual shortcuts to each application, plus the time spent copying these shortcuts to individual desktops as needed.

At first, KCSL chose this route because they had a large IT staff and labor was not an issue. Likewise, they already owned the necessary terminal server licenses. Their objective was to create a scalable, secure and easy-to-use way for their statewide workers to access applications and databases.

The Solution

When KCSL’s IT staff was cut by more than 50%, the organization turned to Parallels RAS to make deployment more efficient. They originally purchased a license for two terminal servers in 2007. KCSL currently have a Parallels Gateway server and 4 Windows Servers, all running on Microsoft HyperV.

Key Benefits

Parallels RAS is a secure, scalable solution which is easy to use and easy to manage. The deciding factor in KCSL choosing the product was the time savings that could be realized by deploying it. Another significant benefit was with the efficiency of deployment. Kansas Children’s Service League (KCSL) used Microsoft Terminal Server before the switch to Parallels. They went from having no support to having Parallels Support which was an added benefit of the move to Parallels RAS.

About Kansas Children’s Service League

For over 120 years, the Kansas Children’s Service League has been giving our best to Kansas kids. Our early work centered on finding homes for abandoned, abused, neglected or orphaned children. It stemmed from a then-radical belief that children grew up best in family homes, not in orphanages or homes for wayward children. Later in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s our work turned to private adoptions of infants. Many Kansans today still trace their roots back to the League. By the 1970s we turned our attention to helping Kansans build strong families. Our merger at the League’s century mark in 1993 with the Kansas Chapter of Prevent Child Abuse America cemented our position. Today we continue our efforts in education and prevention while preserving our mission, to protect and promote the well-being of children. Kansas Children’s Service League is a statewide, COA accredited, not-for-profit agency that works to prevent child abuse, strengthen families and empower parents. For more information visit https://www.kcsl.org/

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 products. Parallels offers a range of solutions to make every organization’s shift to cloud computing simple and affordable.The company’s portfolio includes the award-winning Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS), providing platform-independent virtual desktop, application delivery, and integrated thin client management from a single software package to any modern operating system, as well as to mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. Parallels Mobile Device Management (MDM) offers a complementary (or standalone) solution that enables Parallels’ customers to monitor and manage corporate and employee-owned mobile devices. With Parallels MDM, customers can track their devices and remotely lock or delete data if a device is lost or stolen. In addition, organizations can monitor mobile devices for malware and remove inappropriate apps. For additional information, visit www.2x.com or contact Giorgio Bonuccelli by email (Giorgio.Bonuccelli@parallels.com) or phone (+356 2258 3800).