We performed a comparison between Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable features of the solution are ease of use and the simple environment."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services are unification, central management, and accessibility."
"It's almost an out of the box function once you have installed the other components."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is its security and simple configuration."
"It is a stable product."
"The solution works well as a remote desktop."
"The performance meets our requirements and the stability is good."
"It works fine, and it is largely issue-free."
"The connection is compressed so we don't need a lot of resources to run it."
"It permits us to control the applications that our users are able to get to, in a seamless manner. We're able to distribute applications to users' desktops, just like those applications are on each user's computer, but they're not."
"The most valuable feature is the ease with which you can publish applications to different groups of users, by integrating with Windows Active Directory."
"The stability is ok - once I finished the setup, the system was quite stable."
"It has allowed us to centralize the software location so we don't have to update the software client on 70 computers."
"We can publish apps and desktops on Terminal Servers and seamlessly share printers. We also combine Parallels with Deepnet Security to get two-factor authentication."
"It is a stable solution."
"It is robust. We have some 75 users using it and it doesn't lag. It's very speedy."
"I would say it's expensive as there similar products available for free."
"The training profiles could be better."
"There is a limitation on the number of concurrent users."
"Security in the connection between us and our clients' servers is something that can be improved."
"Its look and feel could be updated. In Azure Remote Desktop Services (RDS), which is a VDI solution, we would like to see linked clones. It is a Hyper-V solution, and it doesn't support linked clones and uses a lot of storage. That's why we don't use it. VMware has a similar solution that supports linked clones for the master image."
"The only problems that you're going to have with the remote desktop are going to be firewall ports, security, and NLA, which is a net network level access control, or TLS transfer layer security or some other SSL-type of security."
"In the next release, I would like to see better performance over slower networks, and integration with Linux, but this is something that we're going to get out of Microsoft in terms of a unified solution."
"I would like to be able to access the remote desktop using a web-based interface, rather than having to use the client."
"We use several gateways because access to our secret zone requires two-factor user authentication. It is a lot of hassle differentiating among users with or without two-factor. Of course, we could use two farms, but that would mean more management too."
"Opening a ticket should be available from the actual RAS console. It is cumbersome to go to a portal, hunt around for five minutes for a link to open a ticket, answer questions meant to direct you towards FAQs instead of live support, then fill out information (license #, version #, etc.) which could more easily be supplied by sending a ticket straight from the console with all of that information automatically specified."
"From a seller's point of view, there are a lot of things that they could do better in the sales cycle."
"We would like to be able to re-label the OTP (One Time Password) popup so our users can easily recognize that they are to put in their DUO code on that line. Most users see OTP and ask what that is."
"If the solution crashes, then all the customers connected through that agent, lose their session."
"Since I've been here less than a year, I have had to upgrade the system three times. The first time was the major upgrade but they have upgraded twice since, and I think that's too many times in that time span."
"The customization of the web interface could possibly use some improvement. Little things, like being able to place a background image instead of just choosing from a palette of colors, would be nice."
"It needs Windows scaling on Android/iOS devices. At present, the concept of delivering apps to Android and iOS devices is appealing, but the reality is the screen size on these devices is so small that, unless there is some scaling option, it is not really usable."
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Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is ranked 1st in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with 76 reviews while Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) is ranked 12th in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with 24 reviews. Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is rated 8.0, while Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services writes "Easy to set up and reliable, but needs an additional control panel". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) writes "Provides good scalability and a secure environment". Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is most compared with TeamViewer, VMware Horizon, Citrix Workspace, VMware Workstation and VMware Horizon View, whereas Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) is most compared with Citrix Workspace, Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service), Parallels Desktop, NVIDIA GRID and VMware Workstation. See our Microsoft Remote Desktop Services vs. Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) report.
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