New Moon Revs Up Canaveral iQ App Delivery Software
Canaveral iQ version 1.5 adds support for Windows CE-based thin-client terminals and introduces a slew of new features designed to make the product easier to use, said Marc Lowe, president and CEO of New Moon, based here.
New Moon touts Canaveral iQ, which shipped in September, as a simpler, cheaper alternative to Citrix MetaFrame for hosting and centrally managing Windows-based applications
on servers.
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New Moon CEO Lowe: Canaveral iQ is sold only through channel partners.
"We had five times as many sales close last quarter as the previous quarter, and that's reflective of the base of VARs that are part of our network. [They are all getting productive," Lowe said. Canaveral iQ is sold exclusively through channel partners, he added.
The company's push into the application delivery market comes as Citrix grapples with the effects of a struggling economy.
Last week, Citrix, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., blamed sluggish sales of its packaged products for a 20 percent dip in revenue and a more than 50 percent drop in earnings for its second quarter, compared with the same quarter a year ago.
Some solution providers working with Citrix and New Moon said the time is right for a competitor to challenge the Citrix dynasty.
"I think the market needs a No. 2," said Jeff Ross, regional sales manager at Creative Networking Concepts (CNC), a solution provider based in Sussex, N.J. The addition of a viable alternative to MetaFrame should help stir up the thin-client market, he said.
CNC, which has found education customers to be the most interested in New Moon, is now implementing Canaveral iQ for three customers, Ross said.
"New Moon gives us a lower-cost alternative for about 90 percent of the functionality Citrix offers," Ross said.
Besides price point, another feature of Canaveral iQ that attracts some customers is its reliance on Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), the standard native to Microsoft's Windows Terminal Server, instead of Independent Computing Architecture (ICA), the core protocol developed by Citrix, said Bill Flemming, senior solutions consultant at Sunetix, a solution provider based in Fort Lauderdale.