GPASoft tackles remote work and cloud deployment with one succinct solution.

The ChallengeRespond to the rising need for VDI, cloud, and greater accessibility to support the distributed workforce

GPASoft, a technology company with over 25 years of experience, specializes in offering comprehensive IT solutions and, through their GPASport brand, to sports entities.

With a reputation for providing robust and consistent applications at competitive prices, they are always seeking partnerships with trusted technology leaders.

The global pandemic was the catalyst for bridging the gap in their tech stack and sourcing a solution that facilitates work from home more readily.

It immediately surfaced the very critical need to support remote clients with access to applications and desktops securely and efficiently from any location and device.

GPASoft’s lack of a suitable solution to address this growing demand led them to actively search for one that could meet this need.

GPASoft also faced the challenge of responding to clients’ growing interest in cloud solutions. They proactively put a strategy in place to address the emerging market trend for deploying ERP and CRM solutions.

The TestCould Parallels RAS serve GPASoft’s ERP and CRM applications in the cloud as expected?

GPASoft was seeking a secure solution that delivered access to applications and desktops from many devices and operating systems, free of bandwidth limitations, with strong peripheral compatibility, solid management of remote printers, and with scalability and high availability.

They initially tested Parallels RAS with a client who had very specific requirements around accessing ERP and CRM applications in the cloud.

Due to GPASoft’s limited experience, setting up the system took a few days, and they spent the next two weeks testing the implementation. The most complex part was the design of the environment, specifically around the installment of active directory, user policies, and Microsoft RDS.

“Within the first week of testing we already saw that we had made the right choice with the product,” David Alonso shared.

GPASoft had considered and tested Citrix as an alternative but encountered limitations in Citrix compared to Parallels RAS. Mainly, greater complexity in configuration and maintenance, higher cost, limited management of remote printers and peripherals, and a greater need for hardware resources.

Parallels RAS enables work-from-home and remote access

By serving as a unifier, Parallels RAS has enabled GPASoft to provide customers with a secure and efficient way to access their critical resources from any location and device.

The implementation has optimized business continuity, increasing operational flexibility and staff productivity in distributed work environments.

Additionally, through careful testing, GPASoft ensured that Parallels RAS was the perfect solution for the migration and provisioning of ERP and CRM software solutions in the cloud.

GPASoft’s clients can now access their critical business systems remotely. This eliminates dependency on local infrastructure and facilitates the scalability of their operations.

And they use Parallels RAS along with Microsoft RDS, as the combination of these two solutions has enabled them to offer a better user experience, as well as simplify management and maintenance tasks thanks to the centralized Parallels RAS console.

The SolutionParallels RAS delivers the necessary solutions needed to support today’s highly distributed workforce

Parallels RAS has proven to be a game changer for GPASoft. It helps solve for the pivot toward remote work and trend in leveraging the cloud for greater access to desktops and applications.

“Expanding our cloud infrastructure with Parallels RAS allows us to guarantee better service to our current clients, but also enables us to tackle new operations and expand our reach in the market,” says David Alonso.

GPASoft realized the benefits of all the services that Parallels RAS provides. As a result, they began to use the solution to offer managed services to customers, in a variety of other ways:

Application publishing: GPASoft uses Parallels RAS to centrally publish applications. This enables them to offer customers fast and secure access to their business applications without having to install them on user devices.

Managed desktop: Although GPASoft leverages this feature in a residual way, Parallels RAS enables them to offer complete virtual desktops as a service, eliminating the need for customers to maintain expensive and complex infrastructures.

Managed hosting services: By using Parallels RAS in combination with other solutions, GPASoft offers managed hosting services for their applications. This enables them to manage and maintain cloud infrastructures efficiently, guaranteeing the performance, security, and availability of hosted services for their clients.

The ResultParallels RAS has optimized expenses and greatly simplified the deployment and management of virtual applications

GPASoft has seen incredible results using Parallels RAS—from cost savings, time savings, and employee resources to hardware requirements and licensing structure. Notably:

• The flexible SPLA licensing model of Parallels RAS has enabled GPASoft to optimize expenses since they are only paying for the licenses they need. This has saved them ~27% compared with a more traditional subscription model.
• Parallels RAS simplified the deployment and management of virtualized applications. This reduces time spent on maintenance and support tasks.
• The transition to the SPLA model has enabled the team to be completely autonomous in the management of licenses, saving an incredible 98% of time spent day in and day out on this task.
• The SPLA model eliminated the need for intervention and accelerated the entire process. In annual terms, this equates to a whopping 40 days of time saved.

“With Parallels RAS in place, the GPASoft IT teams spend less time managing and maintaining infrastructure and more time on strategic projects that drive innovation and business growth,” says David Alonso.

It also allows GPASoft to offer their applications in a cloud environment managed by the in-house IT team. Their support and customer service teams also saw an increase in productivity. They are now able to access the applications they need from any location and device to perform maintenance tasks.

In the case of clients with critical applications, which run in extremely specific environments, and which are difficult to replace or expand, Parallels RAS enables the delivery of these applications to users in a friendly and secure environment without the need for large investments at the hardware level to adapt them to the multi-device and distributed access needs of users.

GPASoft currently has an infrastructure of seven machines to serve their applications in a SaaS model through Parallels RAS. It would take about 120 machines to serve the same applications in a traditional on-premises model.

In addition to achieving a much more efficient use of resources, with Parallels RAS they can ensure high availability that was not possible, or just extremely expensive, with the previous model.

In conclusion, the Parallels RAS SPLA licensing structure has enabled GPASoft to easily adapt to the changing needs of their business, resulting in more efficient license management and lower operating costs.

Plus, the simple and intuitive interface of my.parallels.com makes it easy to manage and administrate licenses.

Interested in trying Parallels RAS for yourself? Try it free for 30 days. Discover the benefits of an all-in-one remote work solution that scales easily with customer demand and builds strong recurring revenue streams.

See more Customer Stories