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A small silicon valley company hopes to take on thin-client computing stalwart Citrix Systems Inc. with a less expensive and more customizable offering later this month.
Executives at New Moon Systems Inc., of San Jose, Calif., said its Canaveral iQ has an advantage over Citrixs thin client, which requires server-side software in addition to Windows Terminal Server. Canaveral iQ requires only Windows Terminal Server, CEO and President Marc Lowe said.
In addition, because New Moon originally sold only an application service provider version, the new enterprise edition is scaled down, thereby ensuring reliability, Lowe said.
“Its really hard to keep an edge if you dont have to compete,” Lowe said of Citrix, which is based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“Its easier to get something up and running” with New Moon than it is with Citrix, said Bill Watters, Web architect at Montclare Technologies Inc., an Oakland, Calif., Web design company.
Where Citrixs MetaFrame XP is good for many users who do mostly the same things, New Moons Canaveral iQ is good for custom needs and individual applications, Watters said. “If I was going to serve users a full desktop, Id use Citrix,” he said.
Watters said he likes Canaveral iQs metering and portal interfaces, plus the capability to link it to his clients intranets. Canaveral iQ also has a shorter learning curve than MetaFrame XP, he said.
Canaveral iQ, which will sell for $179 per concurrent user, works with Windows RDP (Remote Data Protocol) 5.1 and sends APIs to end users terminals, instead of just conducting “screen scrapes,” Lowe said. This method lets hosted software windows appear as if they were actually running on the users computer, instead of appearing through the extra window normally associated with thin-client usage, he said.
“Our long-term goal is to move from Windows 32[-bit] applications to Web services. It kind of opens up the market again,” said Lowe.
In addition, he said, New Moon will add an Extensible Markup Language adapter, resource management hooks, policy-based usage tools and an updated version when Microsoft Corp. makes RDP 5.5 available.
Canaveral iQ also includes directory services built with the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, plus load balancing options, Lowe said.