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Alternatives to Citrix Remote Computing?
Dysfnctnl85 asks: "The company I work for relies heavily on remote computing through a Citrix MetaFrame server. The reliance on this stems from the structure of our accounting software and the fact that we have 2 remote sites that need to access this data all day, everyday. We are investigating alternatives to the Citrix system we currently operate. How do companies of similar structures deal with this type of problem? Is it feasible (or practical) to use Windows Terminal Services to achieve everything Citrix is capable of doing? This includes, but is not limited to, the ability to print from the Citrix session to a user's printer, the ability to access network drives from the Citrix session, access the user's local drives through the session, and the ability to use published apps. The main concern with this type of setup is the ability to print. What alternatives are there to Citrix?"
Lots of stuff, some might not have what you are looking for... But hey, sift through these, and see if there is anything of interest :-)
:)
Genuit's ThinWorx
Tarantella
Provision Networks
HOB
Prospero
Win4Lin
Konect
GraphOn's GO-Global
HTH
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
RDP stems FROM Citrix and the ICA protocol. Citrix was suckered into sharing technology with Microsoft so they could get direct access to the underlying API's a few years back. Citrix was smart in that they didn't share the ICA protocol with MS. MS then developed RDP as their thin protocol. Problem with that is that RDP has a 25k footprint where ICA can cruze just fine on 14k or even less. I guess if you have fewer users and don't care about bandwidth and server costs, then MS Terminal Services are for you... /rolls eyes....
For your Total Cost of ownership... Citrix is the way to go... I can't tell you how nice it is to publish an Application and not the entire desktop. That saves you from dealing with users who delete things or generally like to tinker. Add automatic printer creation and it's a no brainer.
MS did what they always do... they stole the technology and branded it as their own. Remeber in the beginning of Citrix (on NT 3.51 and Winframe 1.6), you didn't need MS terminal services at all... in fact it didn't exist!!!
I apologize for not mentioning more about the subject, but I kinda didn't expect it to get posted in the first place.
To address the accounting software...there is no way we will be changing, so that is not a viable solution at all.
As far as investigating alternatives, we are currently running 3 Citrix MetaFrame servers. Right now, they are barely holding us user-wise, so we're replacing the existing hardware with more servers and adequate hardware. In the process, we will be moving away from Windows 2000 for a number of reasons.
So, do we continue to run Citrix and purchase the licenses for additional users as well as a version upgrade, or do we attempt to put a Windows Server 2003 solution into place utilizing Remote Desktop? Or what else?
Our current Citrix setup is not adequate, and not simply because of hardware, but printing is a total nightmare. There are so many levels involved with printing a report from our Solomon accounting software, it adds complexity to the very act of printing, so much that Citrix routinely breaks. Whoever is running helpdesk on a given day fields a significant number of Citrix calls, and generally speaking it is not the user's fault. It is extremely frustrating to say the least.
Hence this investigation. So I hope I shed some more light on the situation and please keep the suggestions coming.
We rely heavily on Microsoft Exchange, so keep that in mind when suggesting other OS-based solutions. I'm instituting a few BSD solutions for other tasks, but making the switch completely is very far down the road.