John Fly has been in tech leadership for the last 12 years, and makes a point of staying on the leading edge of tech. He’s very comfortable in high-growth startups with fast-paced environments where a million things are happening at once and downtime is not an option.
That’s exactly where he is now, as VP of tech at an innovative company breaking ground in the underdeveloped male fertility industry. “What we do impacts lives,” John says. The stakes are high. And they “cannot afford mistakes.” For that reason, John and his team ensure they’re using “the right tools and technology, and making sure we’re never cutting corners.”
The issue
So, unwavering excellence is nonnegotiable. But there’s another thing John has noticed throughout his career: people are very loyal to their preferred devices. There’s the Mac-or-bust team and the Windows-for-life team, among others. Most people who work on a computer know how they do their best work and don’t want to have to compromise. That goes double for developers and tech professionals.
What happens when mistakes are not an option, but you have a company full of people using different operating systems and incompatible devices? John’s not the only one in this position. It’s an extremely common challenge among businesses of all sizes.
The solution is not to compromise. It’s to do what John and his team did: have the best of both worlds.
The solution
Enter Parallels Desktop. John relies on Macs—but some of his colleagues use other systems, and even those who run Macs often find themselves needing to build or run a Windows application. John doesn’t want to force his team to use specific systems, because he respects the freedom and flexibility that comes with ensuring people are on the device they prefer. That means they have no standardized equipment whatsoever on their team—but they do have Parallels Desktop.
The team relies on quick development cycles to build the best UX possible, and any problems need to be addressed quickly and thoroughly. “If we run into an issue, Parallels lets everyone get on the same page right away. They can all pitch in regardless of what system they have on their desk, because they can replicate the environment on their own systems.”
John’s clear that this environment replication isn’t simply a stop-gap solution that will work in a pinch. “It’s not a rickety, emulated environment. It’s the real deal,” he says of running Windows on his Mac using Parallels Desktop. Plus, it’s not going to bog my system down.”
While troubleshooting is a major selling point for John and his team given what’s at stake, that’s only part of the picture. They also trust Parallels Desktop in dev, layering on another program called Docker. “Docker in Mac, Windows, and Linux is just different enough that you can run into OS environment technicalities that cause problems,” John explains. But we can run Docker on Windows on Parallels on the machine of our choice and even when it’s nested like that, it’s still fast and reliable.”
John used Parallels Desktop in his previous roles, including in environments with thousands of tech employees. He finds it just as value-added in this much smaller company. “Parallels is always worth the money,” he says. “Whether you have ten employees using it or thousands. You’ll save that investment in time and frustration. If you have a use case, you’ll make it back in the first project you do. Probably in the first few hours.”
Ready for this level of ROI potential? Learn more about Parallels Desktop.