MetaFrame Presentation Server's comprehensive security model let us set up multiple admins with varying degrees of access control in the administrative console, a useful feature for the enterprise. We configured a role for helpdesk administrators who could completely control and manage user sessions but could not deploy new applications or change server settings in our server farm.
Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0, Enterprise Edition. Citrix Systems, (800) 424-8749, (954) 267-3000. www.citrix.com
Tarantella offers two products in this market: the Terminal Services Edition (TSE) and the Enterprise Edition. The Enterprise Edition supports remote display of Windows, Unix, Linux, Java, mainframe and AS/400 applications, making it very flexible for consolidating access to applications on heterogeneous platforms under one environment. In contrast, TSE is Windows only and relies on Windows Terminal Services to do much of the heavy lifting. You'll pay for the flexibility of Enterprise Edition--it costs more than 10 times as much per client as TSE. Based on the capabilities and requirements of our performance testing environment, TSE was a better fit for this review.
Tarantella says Secure Global Desktop TSE is the ultimate companion to Windows Terminal Services, and we don't disagree. The product is jam-packed with features, including reporting, monitoring and clustering support, yet it's affordable; in fact, it boasts the lowest per-client price in this review.
We easily administered Secure Global Desktop TSE using a Web browser and found the user interface and online help easy to navigate. For large environments, TSE supports clustering and load balancing, but unlike Citrix MetaFrame, it cannot deploy the application to other servers in the server "team," the Tarantella equivalent to MetaFrame's farm.
