Aqua Connect helps make their Mac application available from a central location to users throughout their global enterprise over various bandwidths
Database Publishing Systems, Inc. was approached by their largest customer to find a way to make their application available from a central location for users throughout the customer’s global enterprise over both low and high bandwidth connections. In the past, using either Citrix or Microsoft’s Terminal Services could have easily fulfilled this request but because the client needed it to be run with a Macintosh application, a new solution needed to be found. A solution was found for those users who had high bandwidth connections but an easy solution for the medium and low bandwidth connections was not. Prior to discovering Aqua Connect, the best idea they had was to use Apple’s built-in screen sharing capabilities on a one-to-one basis. Aqua Connect enabled them to allow both themselves and their customer to manage their installations centrally and have a common user experience throughout their enterprise.
They installed Aqua Connect Remote Desktop Services on their farm nodes of Dual Socket Quad-Core Intel Nehalem Xserves with 16 GB of memory and internal SSD RAIDs in both their main and disaster recovery data centers. In addition to ACRDS, they are also using Adobe InDesign, Actual Technologies ODBC for SQL and their DPS AdTracker X: Enterprise Edition software. They connect to a backend Windows Server running SQL Server for DB and a Windows Failover Cluster for SMB file sharing. Client computers include a mixture of Mac and Windows machines that connect to their hardware running ACRDS via Microsoft’s RDP-compatible software. Their users all connect via either point-to-point circuits or VPN tunnels back to remote sites.
Database Publishing Systems, Inc. plans to leverage Aqua Connect internally for themselves to create a robust test environment for their sales staff to demonstrate their products as well as ACRDS to their clients.
“ACRDS allowed us to solve our problem using drastically less hardware and in an industry-acceptable manner – the terminal services model. Not only did it solve the low/mid bandwidth issue, it also proved to be a perfect solution for all manners of remote connectivity. Further, the user experience is identical to that which they experience on a traditional desktop Macintosh with zero learning curve.”
- Scott S. Waschitz
VP/Development & Client Services
