Custom D deploys Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition to save on billable time

Source: Custom D website.

Custom D, a web development company that spun off from Digital Fusion, one of New Zealand’s developers of bespoke FileMaker-based databases and applications, has chosen a Parallels solution that gives its developers the flexibility to switch easily between operating systems without rebooting.

Custom D’s development stack was previously installed on individual machines. As the business—and the number of developers and machines— continued to grow, IT managers were found that supporting and managing individual computers was becoming more complex and labour-intensive.

“To cope with increasing demands from customers, we needed a single, standard development environment that would enable our developers to update, test, and roll out applications quickly and more efficiently with minimum or no downtime,” said Sam Sehnert, Technical Director at Custom D.

“Besides looking to establish some ‘uniformity’ around what everyone is doing, we also wanted a more stable, performance-intensive platform because we do a lot of apps testing and work on a lot of databases on the backend,” added Chris Petrov, System Administrator at Custom D.

Because Custom D also has a strong presence in Australia and developers travel in that market quite often, the company required a solution that would allow maximum mobility. To maintain a competitive edge, it was also critical to have a solution that provided a plug-in architecture for Vagrant, a standard web development tool used in building virtual machine images.

Custom D tried VirtualBox, but found it a poor fit due to performance issues. Next, the company tried VMware Fusion, which met the company’s performance requirements—but not for customer support. It was also expensive.

Custom D finally chose Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition, not only enabling a unified environment for its developers, but also allowing both Mac OS and Windows environments to coexist on their computers. The Parallels solution also provides IT managers with centralised administration and management capabilities.

Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition enables Custom D’s developers to run both Windows and Mac OS X applications side by side on their respective
workstations without rebooting. This saves them valuable time when developing, testing, and deploying applications.

“Using Parallels as a development environment means that each of the developers’ workstations has Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition installed, and each workstation runs a virtual machine that provides the web server, database server, and all the other apps required in our development environment, from testing apps to running websites to ethnic configuration of machines,” said Petrov.

The Parallels solution streamlines the time developers need to test and deploy apps and makes it easier for them to collaborate on machines that are configured the way they like, as opposed to wasting time wondering why an app won’t install, why the database (performance) is patchy, or why the system is slow. This means they avoid wasting billable time.

In addition, because Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition allows updates and fixes to be done in one standard development environment, IT managers now spend less time attending to individual developer workstations. The solution also provides IT administrators the capability to centrally configure and control every workstation, including what staff can have on their Mac or desktop PCs. A ‘single activation key’ feature eliminates the burden of managing multiple license keys, which makes the product more cost-effective.

“Parallels met all our critical requirements, business-wise and development-wise. It offered a standard developer environment, performance, stability of the platform, mobility and ease of use, management and control, and customer service—all these at a reasonable price,” said Petrov. “The solution’s plug-in support for Vagrant was also a big plus.”

posted from Bloggeroid