Duet has a 3 tier architecture. Duet client can now be installed on a single user or multi user computer systems, with a few limitations. Citrix is a Multi user system running on Windows 2003 OS Platform.

     

    Many enterprises who use both SAP ERP and Microsoft Office software solutions have invested on Citrix as the IT Platform for their Information Workers. Number of such customers are in the order of 10s of thousands and the number of individual users in millions. Duet 1.5 planned to be released next year (2008) will support Citrix Presentation Server.

     

    Duet 1.5 and Citrix support

    Duet 1.0 client was designed only for Windows XP and Windows 2000. Customers have been giving us lots of feedback and it was clear that support for Citrix would enhance the value proposition of Duet enabling enterprises to leverage their investments. Duet 1.5 now supports Citrix Presentation Server. Citrix CPS runs on top of Windows 2003 Server R2 edition.

     

    High level changes to Duet architecture to support Citrix

     

  1. Duet Utility

    2. The duet utility runs Duet services which manage Client-Server Synchronization, Application download, and  User notifications. In Duet 1.0 only one instance of this service can run on the client. Running multiple instances results in unpredictable behavior. However, in Duet 1.5 multiple of these services, one for each user that is logged into the client is run. This ability ensures that all the user specific client-server synchronization, Application download, User notifications happen within the context of the logged user.

     

  2. Database storage changes

    3. Duet uses a local database to store information. This database (SQL Express) gets installed along with the Duet platform. For a single user system this database was sufficient. However with multiple users that roam across the collection of instances served by Citrix Presentation Server, there was a need to externalize the storage and provide isolation of data. Duet 1.5 allows the administrator to setup and use a centralized DB server (SQL Server) for all the users in the system.  

     

    -Ramakrishnan Nagasamy, Program Manager, Duet