Free Thin Clients—
Repurpose Your
Legacy Machines
Make use of legacy hardware and turn it into fully secure and manageable free thin clients, retaining the data in a central location. Parallels RAS integrates Kiosk mode in your infrastructure effortlessly!
Thin Clients as Workstations
Businesses are considering ways to reduce costs in their in-house IT budgets. One significant cost in the workplace is maintaining up-to-date computer hardware. However, cutting costs by keeping legacy machines online can have unexpected consequences, especially in terms of security.
Many businesses find that Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) technology offers a highly secure, low-cost, and centralized solution for cutting IT budgets and keeping maintenance central.
Deploying a virtualization solution allows legacy or low hardware-spec workstations to be fully operational without any upgrades. Utilizing the VDI technology, all the processing takes place in the main server, keeping the data safe. Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) allows businesses to quickly transform legacy machines into Kiosk mode (secure, pseudo thin clients) with their data hosted on a data center.
It also deploys a highly secure, centralized management environment for IT administrators to streamline their operations. With Parallels RAS, IT administrators can extend the PC hardware lifecycle, efficiently manage employee devices, and achieve remote access to client machines.
Free Thin Client Benefits
Deploying Free
Thin Clients
Businesses choose to deploy thin clients on their infrastructure to simplify IT workflow and save some budget. Thin clients are stripped-down machines with lower capabilities than desktop computers, and their data lives on a data center. The most significant benefits of deploying free thin clients across a network are increased manageability and security — with reduced costs, compared to traditional PCs!
Extended PC
Hardware Lifecycle
By converting Windows PCs into pseudo thin clients with Parallels RAS Device Management feature, businesses can significantly reduce costs. While utilizing a virtual desktop to deliver applications over the network, IT administrators can restrict access and usability of the native OS. For example, this means that Windows 7 computers can be transformed into a free thin client running Windows 10, where the native OS is not used. As a result, high-value security improvements can be made instantly without expensive hardware purchases or time-consuming updates.
Central Device
Management
Thin clients enable effortless data and hardware management for the IT administrators that can centrally manage them across the network. IT admins can also check the status of all remote sessions on the pseudo thin client machines. Power cycles can also be automated to make businesses go-green and save further on the budget.
Instant Remote
Access
By deploying pseudo thin clients, businesses can enable instant, secure, and straightforward remote access from those workstations to corporate data on the data center. Shadowing, otherwise known as remote access, allows technicians to take over control of pseudo thin clients directly from the Parallels RAS Console.
Thin Clients — Key Takeaways
In a pseudo thin client deployment, only the data centers need to be secured. Securing the data center is far more manageable than securing individual software and desktops installed on every Windows end-user device.
Parallels RAS offers an innovative method to manage thin clients. With Parallels RAS, native OS functions and settings can be limited to the client users. End-users can only access resources published from Parallels RAS. Moreover, Parallels RAS provides IT teams with more management options over Windows PCs and dramatically reduces the security concerns of keeping legacy hardware up and running on the infrastructure.