GraphOn preps tool for ASPs
jBridge will challenge MetaFrame
By Paula Musich, PC Week Online
August 23, 1999 9:00 AM ET
zdnet.com
Graphon Corp. is readying a new tool for ASPs that promises to make Web-enabling Windows NT applications quicker and easier.
The tool, code-named jBridge, is due by year's end and should provide the first real competition to Citrix Systems Inc.'s multiuser MetaFrame software.
jBridge allows NT tools to operate as multiuser applications, and it promises fast thin-client access to applications from any desktop across the Internet, according to Eric LeFebvre, vice president of business development at GraphOn, in Campbell, Calif.
The tool is the first commercial implementation of technology that GraphOn acquired earlier this year from Corel Corp. Unlike MetaFrame, jBridge does not require Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Terminal Server.
It also does not require access to the NT kernel to create multiple copies of the operating system.
"jBridge is really application-focused instead of session-focused as ... MetaFrame or Windows Terminal is," LeFebvre said. "We don't have to redeploy or redisplay the desktop operating system."
That capability was a key factor in the decision of one new ASP (application service provider) to sign with GraphOn.
"We ... used some Citrix technology, but GraphOn offered more customization and fine-tuning than Citrix," said Jim Plourde, director of Fluor Global Services Software, the ASP division of Fluor Corp., in Greenville, S.C.
jBridge redirects the API and sends only the application's graphical interface to the remote client, running a Java-enabled browser. GraphOn, which already markets Unix-server-to-Windows-desktop Web-enabling software, added a variety of other features to jBridge to compete with MetaFrame.
The software, demonstrated privately at the Internet ASP Forum in San Francisco last week, will include load balancing, client-side printing, session shadowing, suspend and resume functions to minimize the disruption of a network outage, and security features.
Fluor officials found the shadowing capability, which displays an administrator's keystrokes on a user's terminal, useful when demonstrating their Tabware Online software, which manages manufacturing assets.
"We can demo our product anywhere in the world from anywhere in the world," Plourde said. "Also, if a client is using our system and they have a problem, they can push a button, and it will dial in to our help desk and look right on the screen."
Pricing for the software, which will likely debut at Comdex in November, has not yet been set.
Separately at the Internet ASP Forum, GraphOn customer Avcom Technologies Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif., announced a new consulting service, called ASP Now, designed to help software developers become ASPs.
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