Virtual User Session vs. VDI: Perspectives and Potential

The market for solutions for remote access to applications and virtual desktops is estimated by various experts from 3 to 14 billion dollars. Parallels can be considered a relatively young player in this segment. In this article, we will talk about our vision of the situation on the market and share our development plans.

Jacob Zubarev, President of Parallels


The market for remote access to applications and virtual desktops - what is it, in a nutshell? Who is the leader and why? What place does Parallels take?

Y.W. : According to IDC report, by 2019, the market for remote access to applications and virtual desktops will reach $ 4.4 billion. The main players here are VMware, Citrix and Microsoft, with products such as VMware Horizon, Citrix XenApp and Microsoft RDS. Citrix XenApp leads the industry in large industrial solutions. In this case, VMware Horizon in the last 2-3 years managed to win a significant market share. Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) is relatively new, but we are growing much faster than all other players. Today we have more than five thousand customers worldwide, and we are rapidly "eating away" market share from Citrix. Mainly in the segments of small and medium-sized businesses, ISV (independent software developers), service providers and DaaS (Desktop as a Service, cloud desktop). It must be said that service providers and DaaS are generally the fastest growing segment.

Is it a VDI or DaaS niche? How are these technologies related?

Ya.Z.: And the one and the other, and even the third. The largest segment here, in fact, is not VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), but Virtual User Session. That is, remote access is not to the computers themselves on top of server virtualization, but to applications that “spin” within terminal sessions on a Windows server. This is the “oldest” and most cost-effective way to provide users with remote access to applications. VDI is the second largest segment. And it is often much more expensive, at that time, as DaaS is the third, but the fastest growing segment. The reason why we went out to compete with the “monsters” of the market is that we can offer a solution that has all the capabilities of both VDI and remote access to applications, and the ability to build DaaS. At the same time, the cost of our product is much lower. This also applies to mobile access, which is becoming increasingly popular and important for users. That is why today we are growing much faster than competitors.

And why are such services and solutions for the corporate market, which companies might be interested in this? Which countries are you most interested in?

Ya.Z.: IT departments acting as customers of our solutions are much easier and safer to provide their users with access to applications remotely than to “twist” them on local machines. Due to this, they control the issues of system update applications, ensure the safety of their infrastructure, reduce the cost of acquiring additional expensive powerful client devices, computers, tablets. At the same time, traditionally, VDI was very expensive. Despite the fact that this solution exists since 2007 and many predicted its widespread implementation, it still takes up less than half in the terminal access segment. The reason - its high cost.
If we talk about the user profile, then our customers today are companies from different industries, where there are so-called “mobile” employees — those who need to travel a lot for work. Sales managers, freight forwarders, suppliers and many others. The interest from the corporate market is that the company gets a convenient tool for working remotely with them, the employee is able to work with corporate data remotely without visiting the office, and the administrator is efficiently organizing the whole process.

But we see the greatest interest specifically in our solution from companies in the healthcare, education, financial industry, services, as well as independent developers and service providers of various cloud services. Basically, this interest is caused by the desire to reduce both the costs and complexity of its IT infrastructure, as Citrix XenApp and VMware Horizon suffer from this. Developers also need the ability to either make their software available on various platforms, or transform their current business model into a cloud-based, SaaS model, to increase sales.
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As for potentially interesting markets, it is difficult to identify any specific geographical areas. Globally over the next 5-10 years, the vast majority of applications will be provided remotely. And everywhere, all over the world, starting with Africa and ending with the most highly developed countries. At the same time, the reasons why this happens are different. In developing countries, in comparison with highly developed ones, there is virtually no computer infrastructure. They will have to “jump over” the phase of creating a computing / network infrastructure (client server), which provided access to applications on local devices in progressive countries in the period from the 90s to 2010. In fact, in the corporate segment of developing countries, users will have remote access to applications stored in the clouds. Of course there will always be exceptions. There are critical applications, access to which must be provided through local devices. They can be “heavy” or their transfer to data centers or clouds for some reason is not appropriate at this stage. But the vast majority of applications will move to centralized servers, to private or public "clouds".

If we talk about markets, then for us the important thing now is the question of determining the geographical focus in the horizon of one year — two years. The main sales of Parallels RAS today are concentrated in the USA, England, Germany, Japan, Australia and Russia, and the largest growth potential is in the region of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Now we are focusing on markets where we are traditionally strong, but given that the remote access market will grow rapidly everywhere, over time we must shift the focus to other countries.

The potential of this market for the last time in Gartner was estimated at $ 3 billion. Do you agree with such estimates? What are these rather big numbers?

Ya.Z.: Since the market for remote access to applications and virtual desktops includes different segments, there is VDI, there are Virtual User Sessions, there is Desktop Virtualization and the same Parallels Desktop, the numbers of different analysts may differ. It all depends on what and how to count. I think the Gartner score is more or less accurate. In addition, they also, like IDC, predict growth in the coming years. For example, the turnover of one Citrix and their solutions is estimated at 2 billion, so the total market valuation of 3 billion seems quite adequate. If you look at the numbers of other analysts, Technavio, for example, estimates the world market at more than $ 4 billion last year, and they expect that by 2020 this figure will reach $ 14 billion.

In general, estimates and forecasts agree on one thing - this is the future of this market. The nature of such hypotheses is that both the business and the IT industry continue to move toward mobile technologies and tools. The future of the application market (any - corporate, desktop or cloud) - is the erasure of any restrictions - platform, operating system, device from which the user gets access to them, or points of the world from where he wants to work with them.

Analysts point out the enormous potential regarding the new segment of Work Space as a Service. Actually, this is about replacing the operating system in the corporate network, where an employee receives a laptop with a cloud solution, for example, Parallels Workspace or Citrix Workspace, and then can work from any corner of the world. At the same time, he will not even know where the applications he uses are physically located. Even server solutions, I think, will be developed in exactly the way it is organized here. And, by the way, I think that the fact that we support and develop exactly the “mobile” part of the solution gives us the potential for growth in the near future.

At the expense of what in Parallels they want to try to increase their market share and what do you stake on?

Ya.Z.: We focus on simplicity, usability and value of the product. It is obvious to everyone on the market that both Citrix and VMware have very attractive solutions with a variety of interesting features. But the greatest strength of Parallels Remote Application Server is the cost of implementation, maintenance, and license prices, which are substantially (up to 70%) lower than those of similar products. At the same time, in a single version there is no need to buy some specific functionality separately. In addition, working with alternative RAS solutions, along with their high price, requires expensive maintenance and special training from users. To work with them need certified engineers. Usually they are expensive. We are cheaper not only in terms of price, but also in terms of the subsequent support and maintenance of our solution. When creating our product, we strive to simplify the tasks that administrators do every day with the help of special helpers. The second is the implementation of the classic user experience. And the third is the desire not to complicate the product. In any software solution, you can make a lot of additional features that are needed for a narrow segment of clients, while for the overwhelming number of users this will make working with it much more difficult. This is not our way. We take into account the interests of the mass consumer.

From the point of view of technology, Parallels RAS combines the capabilities of both VDI and remote access to applications. For example, we have the option of embedded management of client PCs based on Windows OS, which is not the case with other analogues. In addition, most solutions work only on top of their own hypervisors, while Parallels RAS supports all the major (Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, Citrix XenServer) plus the Remote Desktop Services desktop service. The user can work with a variety of devices - under Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Chrome OS, including the Raspberry Pi microcomputer, quite popular now in the SME sector, and various thin clients.

As you know, we have a remote access mobile application - Parallels Access. It implements a remote access super client, which makes it feel like working with Windows applications at the level of native iOS and Android applications. Very soon, this functionality is fully integrated into RAS.

What are the prospects and problems of this market segment specifically in Russia?

Y.W. : In my opinion, analysts underestimate the potential of this market. I think that here we are waiting for serious growth, far above existing expectations. As for Russia in particular, we will not be an exception. Despite the macroeconomic events within the country that have affected the IT market in the short term, in the medium and long term, the transition to remote access of a significant number of users to work resources is inevitable. Against this background, the VimpelCom (Beeline TM) announced that in the next two years the transfer of more than 70% of its employees to a remote work format seems timely. It is possible that other large companies will soon follow this example. This means that solutions such as Parallels RAS have great prospects in the Russian market. Evidence of this is the fact that Parallels RAS recently acquired the Moscow mayor's office in order to provide its employees with access to applications and virtual desktops.

What are the main technologies and what are the main problems (for example, has the Mobile Device Management problem been solved)?

Ya.Z.: As a separate market, MDM ceases to exist. Today, customers do not have the task to configure the management of corporate devices, it is necessary to provide users with remote access to working applications and protect data from unauthorized penetration. This can be done in different ways and MDM is far from the only solution.

If we talk about narrow technological aspects, then we can, as an example, cite a situation where the user needs to print a massive file that takes up a lot of disk space. If the application "lives" in the cloud, and the printer is local, the file will need to be placed on the local device. Not tragic, but requires extra action from the user. Similarly, if you need, for example, to transfer a massive image weighing 100 megabytes or more. There are still certain bottlenecks, but they are solved by compressing or distributing the servers so that they are closer to the users. Otherwise, for the vast majority of applications, existing technologies work quite stably and well.

Thanks for attention!