Friend's company gets article about big software project

[Zaia]

A friend of mine brainstorms and creates software for a company called TriCerat, which just got a big spread in the magazine "Network World Fusion." What I understand of this software is that it enables a system administrator to keep track of what goes on in that network of computers, which is apparently useful for fixing problems on the computers in the network. From what I understand, it logs every single function each computer in the admin's network to make identifying problems easier, as well as spying on what those employees are doing on those computers? Seems like it'd be good for that too.

I don't think any of you will have a need for this because it's designed for businesses, but I figured it couldn't hurt to get the name of the company out. Plus I want to understand as much about this software as possible, so I thought a discussion about what it does could help that. If y'all find this interesting, that is.

Software tames thin-client setups
By John Fontana
Network World, 04/18/05

TriCerat last week released a suite of tools designed to help users manage their server-based computing deployments.

The company's Simplify Suite is a collection of four tools for managing user profiles, locking down privileges, managing resources such as memory and CPU usage, and supporting printing features regardless of installed drivers. The tools, which are available through a single administrative console, load on to a Windows 2000 or 2003 server that is supporting server-based computing and thin clients either through Windows Terminal Services or Citrix MetaFrame.

"This is what administrators want," says Bill Heldman, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. "If administrators can deploy high-quality application virtualization they would adopt [server-based computing] more quickly."

He says TriCerat, along with competitors such as AppSense, RTO Software and Aurema, are rounding the rough edges users find when they deploy server-based computing, especially in the area of printing.
"Printing issues are a huge turnoff," Heldman says. "If I have to support telecommuters and they can't print, companies say they are not going to do that."

Simplify Printing, which incorporates TriCerat's TriMeta driverless printing technology, allows end users to print from any applications, regardless of the drivers installed on their machines. Typically, administrators have to configure printing on a user-by-user basis and ensure that the drivers on the server-based system match those on the end-user desktop. Simplify Printing configures all the printing capabilities on the fly when the user connects to the application.

The suite also contains a tool called Simplify Lockdown that allows administrators to limit privileges of end users such as running unauthorized applications, tools or scripts.

The limitations, which can be applied at various levels including IP address, machines names, domain or user group, and not only determine what an end user can do but what end users see on their screens.
"The moment you install these tools, the only thing users have is access to log off. Administrators have to build up from there," says John Byrne, president and CEO of TriCerat.

The final two tools in the suite are Simplify Profiles and Simplify Resources . Simplify Profiles lets administrators push user profiles down to a desktop each time an end user logs on. The profiles control the entire end user session, including registry key settings and names of drives. The Simplify Resources tool controls the way Windows allocates CPU and memory to ensure no one application can cripple the performance of the server it is running on.

The Simplify Suite is priced at $3,000 per server.

Link.

I'm probably totally off-base here, but is printing without a driver kind of like Bluetooth technology?

[Arrow]

Well, the drive is the software that lets your computer talk to the printer. Bluetooth is a wireless communication standard, which also has its own drivers.

Taking it from the top, this software is basically a rehash of old mainframe-terminal days, when a user had a monitor and keyboard, and logged onto some huge mainframe someplace else; all the work was done on the mainframe.

With this software package, a company basically buys a big server and stores all of their applications and documents on them (the "server-based computing"). Then the user logs into in the server from some other machine (the "thin client" - a stripped down, elcheapo PC, perhaps something as simple as a flat panel monitor with a small, built-in processor, network connection, mouse and keyboard), and accesses the applications documents that he/she has rights to use. The user can access this anywhere. And as long as the user have a decent network connection, it works pretty well.

Now, the issue with the printers is with how Windows handles networked printers; each computer on the network has to have a copy of the printer driver for each printer they need to use. No driver on your computer means no printing for you. Now, what I'm guessing this software does is put a dummy driver on the thin client machine, which intercepts the print job and sends it to the server, where the server then gives the job to appropriate printer. So as long as the server has the correct printer driver(s), anybody can use the printers.

[Zaia]

So if it's basically a rehashing of an old idea, did the Windows system make this sort of software necessary? I mean, obviously it's aimed at companies who are into server-based computing, because it appears to make that easier, but it's just for them, I guess? Since it's been done before, it's probably not going to convince companies that don't run like this to switch though, will it?

Thanks for your breakdown of their product, Arrow Mk84. I appreciate it very much.

[Arrow]

No problem!

Actually, companies that do a lot work in a centralize database (say, an internet/telephone based retailor, or the accounting department of a large organization) might find this software attractive, especially if it works across multiple servers. Since everyone is working off one (or a few machines), the company only needs to upgrade a few machines every year or two to meet the requirements for the new software, instead of updating dozens of PCs. Also, if gives the IT guys tighter control of what goes on with the computers, resulting in less problems, reducing costs from IT labor and wasted time.

Whether or not a given company will use this product depends on cost vs. speed requirments. The reason the old terminal systems went out of style was because they were far more expensive than giving everyone PCs, and slower than if everyone used PCs. Now, if the company doesn't need for its employees to have blinding speed, and they're all using pretty much the same application anyways, then server-based computing becomes an option (say, a dozen $500 machines, a $4000 server, $3000 for the software vs a dozen $2000 machines and a $2000 server - it comes out to be $13,000 vs $26,000).

[phongn]

One of the cities in the Tampa Bay area (Largo) is a big user of thin clients. IIRC, they have a few Linux servers and the rest are dumb clients scrounged from eBay.

[Zaia]

FYI, it's a tiny company (about a dozen people total), and they're all going to Iceland to celebrate grossing over $1 million last year on the predecessor to this new Simplicity Suite of theirs. So they're doing pretty well.