The
company originally behind the
Windows NT Terminal Server idea. They have
created quite a few products for use in large
enterprise environments, including their most
famous one called
Citrix Metaframe. What
Metaframe allows you to do is to remotely log on to a
Windows NT Server (or
UNIX, but the
innovation is not as grand as on UNIX) and start a
remote session through a
window with the
Citrix ICA Client. It's a really great
applicaiton for
deploying huge amounts of
Windows desktops immediately.
The
application works like this: you have a
window, and the
server sends
bitmap updates to that window, while you send
mouse movements and mouse
clicks back. Seeing your Windows desktop on your computer, without the aid of
emulation products such as
VMWare, is quite
amazing. Products have come before it which accomplish this task, such as
VNC (by
AT&T research), and
PCAnywhere, now by
Symmantec. The problem with those is that it did not create an entirely other session on the Windows NT machine using Windows NT native services, but rather it just sent desktop
screenshots to the respective client. This
solution somewhat
breaks the NT
Workstation /
Domain paradigm, however the results are
fantastic.
UNIX also has a MetaFrame, except that they have had
X Windows remote sessions for a while. The Windows desktop based experience is greatly enhanced by this application. This is one of Windows' "
Killer App"
Microsoft bought parts of the Citrix solution, did their own custom spin on it, and created
Windows Terminal Server Edition of Windows NT4. It is now bundled with
Windows 2000.