Skip to content

Parallels Awingu introduces version 5.5

On June 21st 2023, we released Parallels Awingu 5.5!. The latest version of our secure unified workspace offers enhanced security options and other innovations that further enrich your investment.

What is available in this release and why should you upgrade to Parallels Awingu 5.5?

The key features delivered in Parallels Awingu 5.5 focus on security and maintenance.

New certificate settings for external HTTPS requests

Starting with Parallels Awingu 5.5, customers are now able to have granular control on the certificates used for external HTTPS requests used by the following features: audit logging, reverse proxied web applications, WebDAV with SSL, and SSO metadata.

External requests can now be granularly controlled by verifying identity and only allowing trusted services, or deliberately choosing to allow the connection to an unverified/untrusted service. In addition, administrators can now add certificates for identity verification.

Organizations that rely on internal certificates issued by internal certificate authorities or self-signed certificates can use such certificates for the HTTPS requests to external services. In addition, administrators can manage those requests either by allowing or disallowing external HTTP requests to internal services.

Maintenance

As with most minor releases, bug fixes are included in this release. If you previously reported issues to Parallels Awingu technical support that were deemed to be bugs, they have likely been remedied as part of this release. Find an overview of all changes in the Parallels Awingu 5.5 release notes.

Upgrading to Parallels Awingu 5.5

Parallels Awingu 5.3 and earlier are no longer supported as of this update, so it is critical that you upgrade earlier versions immediately. Upgrading is a straightforward process and is performed right within the admin console. Consult the release notes for instructions on upgrading to Parallels Awingu 5.5.

Parallels Awingu 5.5 is a minor release, and product development is underway for an upcoming major release that will include a variety of enhancements. For further details about Parallels Awingu 5.5, please consult the admin guide.

About Version 2
Version 2 is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Parallels 
Parallels® is a global leader in cross-platform solutions, enabling businesses and individuals to access and use the applications and files they need on any device or operating system. Parallels helps customers leverage the best technology available, whether it’s Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android or the cloud.

How to integrate Jumpcloud and Awingu

Cloud access management has become increasingly important for businesses of all sizes, as an increasing number of employees work remotely and rely on cloud-based tools to stay connected and productive. Azure AD is the most popular solution, but more companies are also looking at solutions like JumpCloud for managing cloud access. In this article, we will explore how easy it is to integrate Awingu and JumpCloud by using the custom SAML app.

Step 1: Create Awingu in JumpCloud via the Custom SAML App

The first step in integrating Awingu and JumpCloud is to create a custom SAML app in JumpCloud. SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) is a protocol used for single sign-on (SSO) authentication, which allows users to log in to multiple applications with a single set of credentials. Awingu supports SAML 2.0, which means that it can be integrated with JumpCloud using SAML.

To create a custom SAML app in JumpCloud, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your JumpCloud admin console and navigate to Applications.

2. Click the “+ Add New Application” button and select the “Custom SAML App”

3.  Enter a name for the app (e.g., Awingu) and on the SSO page set following parameters:

As Awingu only supports Service Provider initiated authentication, the following settings are also mandatory:

The last step is to create two attributes that can be passed on as claims to Awingu. The first one needs to correspond with the UPN of the user in Awingu’s local AD, and the second one will be used as the user display name in the Awingu user interface.

In this example, the UPN matches the email address of the user. If this is the case, you can also create a custom attribute for the user and pass this custom attribute to Awingu:

4. Before saving the application, make sure you assign the right group of users to this application and click “Save” to finish the creation of the SAML app in JumpCloud.

5. Once the app is created, select the app in the list of applications and download the XML metadata file by clicking on the “Export Metadata” button.

Once this is done, you are ready to configure the Awingu side.

Step 2: Enable Federation on Awingu

The second step in integrating Awingu and JumpCloud is to enable federation on Awingu. Federation is the process of establishing trust between two identity providers (in this case, JumpCloud and Awingu) so that users can log in to Awingu using their JumpCloud credentials.

Before you start the Awingu configuration part, make sure you know the username and password of the built-in management user. This is the user account that was created during the initial installation of Awingu. If you have activated pre-authentication or single sign-on within Awingu and you have a problem with the configuration, this is the only account that still allows you to login. All other (admin) users will no longer work as they will be forced to go over to the IdP, JumpCloud in this case.

To enable federation on Awingu, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your Awingu appliance with an admin user and open the system settings.
  1. Go to “Configure” -> “User Connector” -> “Federated Authentication” and set the Type to “Pre-authentication” and the Protocol to SAML”.
  1. Set the Entity ID to “Awingu” and upload the Metadata XML file downloaded earlier onto the Awingu appliance after switching the Metadata Type from “URL” to “XML”.
  1. Set the Username & Display Name claim to the same names as set on the Jumpcloud side, in this example “username” and “displayname”.
  1. Set the Workspace URL to your public Awingu DNS name.
  1. Click Apply.

Once this is done, test your configuration by opening an incognito web browser window and go to your Awingu URL. If all is correct, you will be redirected to JumpCloud.  After a successful login to JumpCloud, you will be redirected to Awingu, and Awingu will ask you to type in your password. This will be your local Windows AD password. No need to panic, this is normal behavior as we only have activated so far in the “pre-authentication” and not yet the full single sign-on.

In case something goes wrong, and the pre-authentication is not working you can still login to the Awingu appliance with the built-in management user. To do this, open a new incognito window and go to https://your.awingu.url/login?noPreAuth (be careful, this is case sensitive). This will allow you to login and make modifications to the configuration.

Step 3: Go full Single Sign-On in Awingu

Once you have a working pre-authentication and know the integration with JumpCloud is done correctly,  you can go to the last step, which is switching the Federation Authentication type from “Pre-Authentication” to “Single sign-on”.

This last step is independent from the IdP that is used (JumpCloud in this case) and will remove that popup for the local AD Windows password. You’ll need to make Awingu a sub-CA of your Active Directory. By doing so, Awingu can generate user certificates and then via Kerberos and other standard Windows protocols, Awingu can let the user login to the applications and drives without the need of a Windows password or without the need to install any Awingu software onto the Windows environment.

Have a look at this video: https://youtu.be/8343EIAVHns or to the admin guide to learn more about how to generate those certificates. Be careful, because certificates and Kerberos are sensitive to DNS and other details. Follow the instructions to the letter to make it work.

Once you have uploaded the certificates to your appliance, your users can log in to Awingu with their JumpCloud credentials. This means that you can manage cloud access for your entire organization using a single platform (JumpCloud), while still providing your users with a seamless login experience.

About Version 2
Version 2 is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Parallels 
Parallels® is a global leader in cross-platform solutions, enabling businesses and individuals to access and use the applications and files they need on any device or operating system. Parallels helps customers leverage the best technology available, whether it’s Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android or the cloud.

Gas transport company switches from Citrix resulting in an 80% reduction of their infrastructure footprint

SPEED OF IMPLEMENTATION
EASE OF USE
COST SAVINGS
“Awingu just worked and that’s what we needed. A simple, straightforward application that accelerated our ability to achieve our goals.”
davidderoock2
David De Roock
IT Director, Exmar NV

🔶 CHALLENGE: Provide employees and external contractors seamless access to business assets quickly and efficiently without continuously needing to maintain the environment. 

❓ TEST: Will Awingu be easier to maintain while offering a stable user experience? 

⭕ SOLUTION: Awingu enabled the bulk of Exmar NV’s workloads to shift from twenty-five to five remote desktop machines by assigning more resources to them than their Citrix solution could handle. 

✅ RESULT: Moving away from Citrix was critical to realizing significant cost savings and improved user experience for both IT teams and end users.

 

Exmar NV is an energy supply chain provider with 2500 employees offering tailor-made energy solutions to the gas industry. The mission is to serve their customers with innovations in the fields of offshore extraction, transformation, production, storage, and transportation by sea of liquefied natural gases, petrochemical gases, and liquid hydrocarbons. 

Prior to 2019, Exmar was utilizing the Citrix solution in tandem with VPN for their employees to access business files and applications. This was a sufficient solution for the most part, but it was complex and costly. Also, accessing large files was problematic. The load was heavy and extra traffic added an additional challenge, especially when traveling end users went to remote locations in Asia, Africa, or vessels out to sea. 

THE CHALLENGE: Provide employees and external contractors seamless access to corporate files quickly and efficiently without the need to constantly maintain the environment. 

Exmar was looking for: 

  • Simple workspace management 
  • Seamless implementation 
  • Uninterrupted access to business files and applications 
      

The arrival of COVID in 2019/2020 resulted in a shrinking IT team at Exmar. This made maintaining the elaborate Citrix environment increasingly difficult. After a 2.5 year struggle, David De Roock, IT Director with Exmar, went back to the drawing board for alternate solutions.

“Citrix was too complex with a lot of virtual servers, layering storage issues etc. I lost count how many times team members would mention in meetings that ‘Citrix isn’t working again’. This was disruptive to our day-to-day business and we couldn’t continue this way”, David De Roock (IT Director, Exmar NV) says.

THE TEST: Will Awingu be easier to maintain while offering a seamless user experience?

David was impressed that within 2 days of his conversation with Awingu, the pilot was off the ground. 

The following week, David’s team conducted extensive testing with both external and internal users. 

Positive user feedback included:  

  • The testing process was easy and straight forward.
  • Accessing resources through a web browser—without the need to install anything—was an immense benefit.
  • Speed was impressive; the startup time of applications was drastically reduced since no plugins were required. 
  • The support efforts needed from their desktop team were reduced since a modern HTML 5 browser is the only requirement.
  • A much better user experience – the server didn’t crash and browser updates didn’t interfere with plugins.
  • Users can use any device so laptop distribution was eliminated.

 

“The overall sentiment of those involved in the pilot was that Awingu was simple. The time previously used to maintain the Citrix environment shifted to focus on how we can improve our processes and environment to positively affect our customers’ bottom line”, David mentions.

This was enough for David to decide to make the move from Citrix to Awingu.

THE SOLUTION: Awingu enabled Exmar to shift the bulk of their load to five remote desktop machines, assigning them more resources than the Citrix solution could handle.

David was pleased to see that the number of virtual machines reduced drastically from twenty-five to five.  

Plus, the need for Exmar-provided laptops was eliminated for external agencies. Not only was this advantageous for their budget but it also enhanced security as there is always elevated risk when you have laptops traveling to every corner of the globe. 

The simplicity of Awingu is what made the biggest impact. The learning curve was minimal, and it only took two weeks to decide that a full roll out was the best choice for their business. 

The personal attention of Awingu’s Support team was another deciding factor. A couple of minor issues popped up over the weekend and the Awingu Support team was available and willing to help. By Monday, issues were solved, and it was business as usual without any interruption for the end user. 

David explained that “Awingu is very straightforward and easy to roll out. This was the driver to make the move from Citrix to Awingu.” 

THE RESULT: Moving away from Citrix was critical for Exmar to realize significant cost savings and ease of use for both IT teams and end users.

Moving to Awingu was the solution Exmar needed to strengthen their budget and reassign resources where they were needed. 

In summary, the main benefits they experienced were: 

  1. Reduction of infrastructure footprint: What once required twenty-five virtual machines now only requires five. A reduction of 80%.
  2. Zero complexity: The learning curve was minimal thanks to the easy-to-use and secure unified workspace. Their pilot was rolled out in two days. Full deployment and testing with 100 users spanned an additional 2 weeks.
  3. Cost savings: Licensing costs were reduced by 66% annually.

 

“The overall picture? The Awingu experience is a lot better, simpler, and easier to maintain. We haven’t looked back and an expansion of the solution is in the works”, David concludes.

About Version 2
Version 2 is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Parallels 
Parallels® is a global leader in cross-platform solutions, enabling businesses and individuals to access and use the applications and files they need on any device or operating system. Parallels helps customers leverage the best technology available, whether it’s Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android or the cloud.

Awingu introduces version 5.4


November 28, 2022, Ghent (Belgium). Today, Parallels Awingu launches its new product release with version 5.4. As with every major release, Awingu 5.4 brings enhancements and changes in various domains: 

  • Security: automatic logout 
  • Quality of life improvements 
  • Foundational updates 

Automatic logout

Parallels Awingu administrators can enable and configure an inactivity timeout in the System Settings. When this feature is enabled and no activity is registered, the user will be logged out automatically. This ensures that inactive or “away-from-keyboard” sessions have a lower risk of getting compromised if their endpoint device gets accessed by malicious actors. 

Quality of life improvements

Shutdown troubleshoot command: Administrators can now shut down the Parallels Awingu appliance via the troubleshoot menu in the System Settings. This way, it becomes easier to take a snapshot when upgrading to a different version. 

Download packages more resilient: The number of individual downloads when downloading the packages for an upgrade has been drastically reduced. This will increase the reliability when network connectivity between the Parallels Awingu repository server and the upgrading appliances is weak. 

Simplifying node options: As of Parallels Awingu 5.4, we made the management of nodes simpler by only allowing frontend/backend or frontend-only nodes. 

Foundational updates

OS upgrade: the underlying operating system of Awingu has been upgraded. 

REST API stability changes 

 

For more information about Parallels Awingu 5.4, please consult the latest admin guide. 

Upgrading to the latest version is easy and happens with a single mouse click. Forgot how? Check our tutorial. For support and knowledge base, please refer to my.awingu.com. 

About Version 2
Version 2 is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Parallels 
Parallels® is a global leader in cross-platform solutions, enabling businesses and individuals to access and use the applications and files they need on any device or operating system. Parallels helps customers leverage the best technology available, whether it’s Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android or the cloud.

Ensuring secure remote access at Hospital del Mar

The Hospital del Mar is a hospital in Barcelona (Spain) with more than 4,000 employees that is part of the group Parc de Salut Mar. This organisation is located on the Barcelona coast and brings together one of the city’s most dynamic health education, knowledge and research centers.

At the end of 2019, they started looking for a secure solution to replace their current remote access setup, and they found Awingu!

Hospital Del Mar Birds View
The Hospital del Mar is one of Barcelona’s largest healthcare institutions.

Punctual remote access and the impact of the pandemic

In 2019, Hospital del Mar used several solutions to be able to give remote access to virtual applications and desktops to a specific group of employees in an exceptional way. They needed a tool that would make this external access more secure, since the current solution did not respond to all of their needs.

After doing market research, they concluded that Awingu was the solution that suited their needs the best, due to its simplicity and affordable price. Thanks to Awingu, the hospital was able to ensure remote access to a group of 50 users in a very simple way and without high costs.

With the arrival of the pandemic in March 2020, the need for remote access grew exponentially and the volume of users increased to 400. Hospital del Mar managed to do it in approximately one week, since the implementation and ‘roll-out’ were very simple.

With Awingu, Hospital del Mar could fulfill its main objective: to have a portal where professionals could connect and have access to all the necessary information and resources in an easy and secure way.

Simple solution for both users and administrators

Prior to the implementation of the Awingu solution, the Hospital’s professionals did not often work remotely, but rather on a very occasional basis. However, due to the pandemic, everything changed and for the hospital it was essential to adapt to this new reality allowing this safe and easy access.

The SSII department highly appreciates several of the many security capabilities that our product offers. One of the features that they are using the most today is two-factor authentication (MFA). Regarding this, Albert Márquez Colomé (SSII and Communications Director at Hospital del Mar) commented that: “We trust Awingu; It is a solution that gives us security.”

Not only the IT team is happy with the tool, but also the users. As Albert explains to us:

“Users adopted Awingu in a completely transparent way. The product is easy to use, secure and it meets our needs (access to applications and desktop). It just works.”
Albert Márquez Colomé
Albert Márquez Colomé
SSII and Communications Director, Hospital del Mar

Another most notable advantage for Hospital del Mar was the fact that they could use the smart card reader (‘Smartcards’) and be able to digitally sign documents while working in the workspace of Awingu. This option was added in one of the recent versions that came out of the product and was necessary for the hospital, so they are very happy that the product continues to evolve and that they listen to their customers.

Furthermore, working with Awingu gives your employees flexibility: they can easily access applications or desktops from any device, even using their personal one (‘BYOD’).

These personal devices are not managed by the hospital, but the IT team is reassured that the connections are taking place securely through Awingu.

This is another notable advantage for the IT team of Hospital del Mar, given that they did not have the resources to provide new devices to all staff and did not want to install VPNs on personal devices either:

“For example, if someone has a virus on their own laptop, we don’t want it to spread to the hospital network, so we avoid using VPNs. Using Awingu, we respond to the need for connectivity and avoid security problems”
Albert Márquez Colomé
Albert Márquez Colomé
SSII and Communications Director, Hospital del Mar


Use of Awingu in the future

Since Awingu is allowing the access to legacy applications, the IT team is working on implementing remote access to these through our software.

In general, Hospital del Mar likes the ease of installation and use of the product. In addition, the team thinks that the solution is very profitable: “it does what it should do for an adequate cost and we really believe in the product”, they explain.



LEARN MORE ABOUT AWINGU
FOR HEALTHCARE

About Version 2
Version 2 is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Parallels 
Parallels® is a global leader in cross-platform solutions, enabling businesses and individuals to access and use the applications and files they need on any device or operating system. Parallels helps customers leverage the best technology available, whether it’s Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android or the cloud.

×

Hello!

Click one of our contacts below to chat on WhatsApp

Social Chat is free, download and try it now here!

×