New Moon Systems Inc. on Monday announced Canaveral iQ 2.0, a new release of its flagship product for managed access to applications running on a server.
Canaveral iQ operates on top of Terminal Services, a part Microsoft Corp.’s Windows server software packages. Benefits of using Canaveral iQ with Terminal Services include server load balancing and improved manageability, according to New Moon, in San Jose.
“Canaveral iQ sits in between user and server and decides which server is most available to equally spread load over all servers,” said Max Herrmann, vice-president of marketing and strategies at New Moon.
Canaveral iQ 2.0 can handle more than 5,000 concurrent connections, an improvement over the approximately 1,500 connections supported by Canaveral iQ 1.5 with Service Pack 1, the preceding version of the product, Herrmann said. The new version also allows users to set up various levels of administrators to manage user groups or functionality, he said.
“Companies used to use terminal services for tactical reasons; to connect remote offices, for example. Now it has become a strategic solution as companies realize that centralizing IT and running applications on the server is easier and cheaper,” he said.
New Moon sees Citrix Systems Inc.’s MetaFrame product as its main rival but claims Canaveral iQ is cheaper, a better match with Windows and doesn’t overload users with features they don’t need. Current New Moon customers include Colorado State University and the U.S. Department of Defense, Herrmann said.
Canaveral iQ 2.0 was optimized for use with Microsoft’s recently announced Windows Server 2003 but also works with Windows 2000 Server. Canaveral iQ 2.0 will be available worldwide this quarter for US$179 per user with a year’s subscription for patches and maintenance releases, Herrmann said.
