Devolutions Backs ControlR in Strategic Push for Self-Hosted Secure Access

MONTREAL, QC – January 28, 2026 – By Tyler Nguyen

Devolutions, a global leader in IT management solutions, has announced a significant two-year sponsorship of ControlR, an open-source remote control platform. The partnership moves beyond simple funding to facilitate a deep, native integration of ControlR within Devolutions' flagship product, Remote Desktop Manager (RDM), marking a strategic investment aimed at bolstering security, compliance, and user control in the competitive remote access market.

The collaboration will enable Jared Goodwin, ControlR's creator and the original author of the popular Remotely project, to dedicate his efforts full-time to the platform's development. This move is expected to accelerate the evolution of ControlR while ensuring its long-term sustainability as an independent, MIT-licensed open-source project.

A Win for Security and Data Sovereignty

For IT professionals and managed service providers (MSPs), the integration of ControlR into Remote Desktop Manager represents a powerful shift towards greater security and autonomy. ControlR is a self-hostable remote access solution, meaning organizations can deploy and manage the entire infrastructure on their own servers. This architecture is a direct response to growing industry concerns over data sovereignty, security, and regulatory compliance like GDPR.

Unlike many popular cloud-dependent remote access tools, a self-hosted model ensures that sensitive connection data and session information never traverse third-party networks. This gives organizations complete control over their data, a critical requirement for sectors such as finance, healthcare, and government. ControlR provides secure, browser-based access to Windows, macOS, and Linux devices through a centralized web server and lightweight agents, streamlining remote support without compromising on security principles.

The partnership aims to solve a long-standing challenge for users of comprehensive management tools like RDM. While RDM excels at centralizing access to hundreds of protocols and third-party tools, the experience can sometimes feel like managing a collection of disparate applications. This sponsorship is designed to change that.

“Our customers rely on RDM as a central platform for access, credential management, and remote connections, not a collection of disconnected tools,” said David Hervieux, CEO of Devolutions, in the official announcement. “Partnering directly with ControlR allows us to deliver a more tightly integrated remote assistance experience inside RDM that responds more quickly to customer feedback and evolves alongside real operational needs.”

A Modern Blueprint for Open-Source Collaboration

This sponsorship highlights a growing trend of symbiotic relationships between commercial software companies and the open-source community. Rather than acquiring the project, Devolutions is fostering its independent growth, a model that benefits both parties. Devolutions gains a robust, transparent, and rapidly evolving technology to enhance its commercial offering, while the ControlR project receives the financial stability needed for sustained, full-time development.

A key element of the deal is the preservation of ControlR's independence. Jared Goodwin retains full control over the project's technical direction, and its MIT license ensures it remains freely available and open to community contribution and modification. This structure avoids the common pitfall where corporate sponsorship leads to a project's goals being dictated by commercial interests, potentially alienating its community.

Goodwin's track record lends significant credibility to the endeavor. As the creator of Remotely, a similar .NET-based remote access tool that was successfully developed and later sold, he brings proven expertise to the table. ControlR builds on this experience, offering a modern, cross-platform solution designed for performance and security.

This initiative is not an isolated gesture for Devolutions. It follows the company's established philosophy of investing in the open-source ecosystem. In a landmark move in July 2025, the company committed $3 million over three years to Avalonia UI, a cross-platform .NET UI framework, to modernize RDM's interface. Devolutions also actively maintains and contributes to other open-source projects, including IronRDP and FreeRDP, reinforcing its strategic commitment to leveraging and supporting the foundations upon which modern software is built.

Forging a Competitive Edge Through Strategic Partnership

In the crowded and highly competitive market for remote access and IT management tools, Devolutions' sponsorship of ControlR is a calculated strategic play. By integrating a powerful, self-hosted, and open-source remote assistance tool natively into RDM, the company is creating a unique value proposition that sets it apart from competitors who rely solely on proprietary, cloud-based systems.

This move directly addresses the needs of a sophisticated and growing segment of the market: organizations that demand transparency, customizability, and absolute control over their security posture. The open-source nature of ControlR, combined with its permissive MIT license, offers a level of flexibility that is impossible to achieve with closed-source, proprietary solutions. IT teams can inspect the code for security vulnerabilities, customize it to meet specific internal requirements, and integrate it into their workflows without fear of vendor lock-in or restrictive licensing terms.

By funding ControlR's development, Devolutions is effectively accelerating the creation of a feature set that will directly benefit its own customers. This model of co-development—where a commercial entity supports an independent open-source project that feeds back into its core product—could serve as a blueprint for sustainable innovation across the tech industry. It demonstrates that commercial success and a commitment to open-source principles are not mutually exclusive but can be powerfully synergistic, creating a virtuous cycle where corporate investment fuels community-driven innovation, which in turn enhances the value of the commercial product.