New Moon Aims To Eclipse Citrix

With Canaveral iQ v2.0, New Moon has enhanced its next-generation application-management software with a variety of features designed to augment the basic terminal services functionality built into Server 2003, according to New Moon officials.

"Server 2003 is a great base product, but there are some key management features not in there, such as load balancing, application publishing to a browser, etc.," says Max Herrmann, vice president of marketing and strategy for New Moon. "We provide managed terminal services beyond what the operating system provides out of the box."

And by positioning its software as a complement to Microsoft's OS, Herrmann says New Moon enables customers to stick with their current Windows environments vs. transitioning and supporting Citrix's MetaFrame proprietary protocol.

One IT outsourcing solution provider and Microsoft partner had high marks for New Moon, noting in particular the product's ease of installation and administration vis-a-vis MetaFrame. Mike Johnson, network administrator at Broadway Computers, says he has completed a 300-user deployment of Canaveral iQ at multiple branch teller stations at the First United Bank & Trust in Oakland, Md., where he plans to expand the solution to 200 more users. The setup gives tellers access via their terminals to applications such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Office, which sit on back-end servers.

"If you compare New Moon to Citrix, I like everything about it," Johnson says. "It's simpler to configure and use, doesn't require a lot of training as Citrix does, and it's intuitive. [New Moon] doesn't require the tweaking and constant babysitting that Citrix does."

And it's much cheaper. Johnson says that the New Moon list price came in 25 percent lower than the pricing he scouted at Citrix VARs in his area. Ultimately, he says, New Moon's sales team was able to offer a rate that was 40 percent lower license-to-license against MetaFrame. "Plus, they provided us a network engineer to help us do the install and didn't charge us a dime for it," he says.

Canaveral iQ v.20 builds on the latest features of Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol version 5.2 that beef up the terminal services capabilities in Server 2003. New features in New Moon's latest offering include intelligent file association, advanced desktop publishing and location-based application launch settings, printer mapping, location-based security policies and a single port firewall traversal to better secure server farm management.

New Moon uses distributors to get its products into the hands of its network of 200 certified VARs. Canaveral iQ v.2.0 will ship this quarter. New Moon customers with its Premium Software Subscription will be upgraded to Version 2.0 for free.