As well as thin-client desktops, Windows Terminal Server is frequently used in conjunction with Citrix Presentation Server to provide ordinary PC users with access to hosted applications.

However, Citrix isn’t the only vendor to offer this type of add-on, with similar functionality also available using the 2X Application Server from 2ux.

The 2X package employs the standard Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) rather than Citrix ICA and, although not as configurable as Presentation Server, it is quicker and easier to deploy.

It also costs less, with a free version available for customers with five clients or fewer.

The core software needs to be loaded onto a Windows 2000/2003 server configured and licensed as a Terminal Services/Server host, and is installed like any other application, with a simple Windows console for setup and management.

Using this you can stop and start both the background service and an optional web proxy to tunnel everything over http rather than using standard TCP ports for each of the protocols involved.

The web proxy also adds support for a portal, enabling users to access applications from a browser. However, the 2X Application Server client still needs to be installed to run the applications and, in the current release, portal access is only available for Windows clients.

The applications are also installed on the server and published just by browsing to the main executable used to start them. Access can then be limited to specific domain users, computers or IP addresses and a suitable icon selected. But that’s about all there is to it.

Web publishing is similarly straightforward, just a matter of clicking on a button to generate the required source code. We used IIS running on our Windows server to host the portal, but other web servers and remote hosts can also be used.

There are also facilities to customise the portal template to suit company style.

Out at the user end the 2X Application Server client needs to be installed to run applications. This is available for Windows 98 or later with the option of downloading from the portal. Clients for Apple Mac and Linux PCs, though, must be distributed and installed separately.

We had no real problems with any of the clients, although we had to configure additional compiler libraries on a couple of our Linux PCs – fairly standard practice for Linux applications.

However, we were disappointed to find that the Linux client needed to be run from the command line and that we had to type in a plain text password when scripting a session. A GUI version is due in the next release, but wasn’t available at the time of testing.

We published a number of applications, including Internet Explorer, and tunnelled them to Windows and Linux clients. It was a bit surreal running Explorer from a Linux desktop but the browser worked as expected, as did the other applications we tried.

Note, though, that in each case the application is hosted in a user session on the remote Terminal Server, with limited access to local resources other than printers.

Clearly something of a specialist product, 2X Application Server will appeal to small businesses that are looking to benefit from the lower management costs associated with server-based computing.

In particular, it will interest those who want to publish individual applications without the complexity and cost of the Citrix alternative.