| Application Servers for Omnis Applications |
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Ever since the internet came along many Omnis developers have dreamed of ways to use that medium to deploy their Omnis Applications in an economical and user friendly fashion. We have had technologies like Citrix Terminal Servers and Windows Terminal Servers available but they are expensive and far from easy to set up properly. Now another option has come into the playing field, Linux. Using Open source software we can lower costs and for experienced Linux administrators/developers the Linux Terminal server is relatively easy to set up. The technology has been around for some time and is well proven but for various reasons, collectively we have not taken advantage of it. I propose we change that by collaborating. Here at Ikon we have the knowledge and experience to help you test your applications before you take the next step. You have here a relatively inexpensive way to do proof of concept. You don't have to build your own server and go through all the steps we have already figured out. Just send us the applications and we put them on our server for you to test them in this exiting new environment. We have been providing Linux firewalls to our customers since 2001 and Web Hosting services on Linux (LAMP) servers since 2003. We have several hundred domains hosted on our servers, mainly for local customers. For a while now we have been developing expertise in building Linux Terminal servers in various contexts such as diskless clients for example. In that work we have come across a way to provide Omnis Studio and Omnis Classic thick applications as thin clients from the world wide web. Yes that's right, this is not about the Omnis Web Client. Although that may be fine technology and relevant in many situations it requires special programming on part of the developer. This solution provides the full application interface just like it would run on a users desktop. You will be able to provide a simple link on a web page for your customers to click on to download all the components involved.
The technology has been tested on Windows Clients, Linux and Mac OSX clients and works great on all three. There is good reason to believe it works well on other platforms too because the delivery is provided by a tried and trusted terminal server technology from Nomachine. Although we have tested this service quite extensively and we believe it is stable, we still don't have the necessary feedback we will only get from our peer developers with their many applications and situations. The plan is to provide 4 basic services:
And now on to the pricing. At this point we are only giving a price on the first type of service for development (a production managed shared server will be available later depending on demand): The basic monthly fee is €148 ($189). Included is technical help one management account and 3 additional user accounts (concurrent users), 10G disk space. Extra user accounts are €10/month. To encourage quick adoption we will be giving the first 10 customers one week for free (you can opt out within the first week) and full development support included for the first 6 weeks to the extent that resources allow. All they have to pay is the monthly fee. We don't have pricing on the Managed Application hosting yet but we hope to be able to provide a competitive price per user type of deal. Preparing your application for Application Services. Once you have your application up and running on our test server you will quickly see the strengths and weaknesses in the system. We have 3 general options for delivering the application
Linux gurus please read If the demand for this service goes over a certain level we will not be able to handle everything with our current staff. In that case I would like to have on file names of Linux experienced Omnis developers that can be called on to help out. Please send in your resume if you are interested in work of this nature. This does not involve traveling as far as our servers are concerned but if a customer needs on site expertise for rolling his own system, traveling might come into the picture in that context. |
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Give users access to your full Omnis Applications through the internet. Both Omnis Classic and Omnis Studio applications are opened in a window on the users desktop. Looks like the local app but runs on a remote server. 
To demonstrate, we have 
The preferred one is the direct X-windows environment because it it the lightest and the user will experience the application as integrated into his desktop. 
The next option is to use an X-windows desktop like xfce4. the user will see what seems like an application window but in fact it's a near full featured desktop. You can add other non Omnis applications in the mix, mix and match Studio and Classic and have complete control of the desktop environment.
The third option is to provide the full Gnome or KDE desktop environment. This environment may be practical in some cases depending on the features needed. We predict however that use of this will be rare because it's resource intensive and harder to control. Your management account will however include the full desktop environment as you wish.| < Prev | Next > |
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