Thin-client players to battle it out

XY Logic has hit the local thin-client market with all guns blazing claiming its software is on average between 10 and 15 percent cheaper than Citrix's MetaFrame and is offering to take 40 percent off its price for any Citrix quote until the end of June.

Paul Schenk, sales and marketing director at XY Logic, also claimed the distributor will do a better job at looking after dealers. "Citrix are arrogant as far as the dealers are concerned because they've had the market to themselves for so long. I know what pisses resellers off and I don't plan to do that with New Moon," he said.

He claimed that based on reseller feedback, Citrix cuts resellers out on big enterprise deals and does not pass on deals of any significance to its channel.

He said resellers will "make more money" from New Moon. "The margins are better," he claimed.

New Moon has captured around 10 percent of the global thin client software market and has thousands of reference sites globally.

Schenk said XY Logic has already secured customers in Australia, but declined to name them.

Canaveral - in its second version - supports Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and builds upon the latest features of Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) such as true colour, audio support and serial port redirection," the company said.

Rob Easton, a contractor for Axis Networks and qualified Citrix Systems' trainer, agreed that Citrix have become arrogant over time because they've been the only player in the thin-client software space.

Easton intends to continue selling and installing both products claiming they both have their merits but said that dealing with XY Logic has been "a breath of fresh air." "They're a small, tight organisation and easy to communicate with," he said.

He said that with New Moon's Canaveral, "everything is stored in an SQL database" and can be accessed with significant granularity. "Citrix doesn't have that," he said.

The New Moon software also costs less than Citrix and dealer margins are also protected. Users can register to buy New Moon online. They register with New Moon and receive a preferred buy price which protects resellers from being undercut, he said. "You can download the software off the website and get an electronic license back. These are the things that differentiate it from the Citrix model," he said.

Citrix's channel marketing manager, Peter Brockhoff, welcomed the competitor to the market, but claimed competitors such as New Moon haven't been able to get traction in the market. Still, he said that New Moon entrance through XY Logic will help to grow the thin-client market here. "It's not something that's going to have us lying aware in a sweat at night," he said. He claimed that channel partners were generally not unhappy with margins they were making on MetaFrame.