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Software Consulting Services, LLC (SCS)
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Partner History
Software Consulting Services, LLC (SCS) was founded in Nazareth, PA in 1975 by Martha Cichelli as a contract programming company and started off developing custom applications for clients like American Express and St. Luke's Hospital. As Martha's husband, Richard Cichelli and several members of his staff left the American Newspapers Publishers Association/Research Institute (ANPA/RI) to join SCS, they continued their passion, specializing in providing the newspaper industry with software development, systems engineering and integration, technical support and training.
Richard and his team at ANPA/RI developed the first automated display ad dummying program for newspapers, Layout-80, named after the year in which it was developed. Layout-80 was licensed to SCS as their first product and renamed as Layout-8000 to reflect the improvement of the application.
Enabling the first completely electronic paginated newspaper, Le Droit, a French newspaper in Ottawa, Canada, SCS is a truly innovative leader in their industry. It was this same project that would see SCS write the first Quark Extension, namely LinX, which imports page geometries from Layout-8000 directly into QuarkXpress, helping Quark create the concept of user or other vendor-supplied extensions to QuarkXpress.
With over 30 years of experience as a systems integrator and serving more than 300 newspapers worldwide, the product line at SCS has grown to include most newspaper applications pre-press, advertising order entry and billing, edition design, display ad dummying, classified pagination, ad production workflow tracking, editorial archiving and digital asset management. Enhancements and add-ons for major SCS applications, collectively called The AdBoss Suite, are being developed to enhance information flow and generate additional revenue.
Benefits of Partnership with NoMachine
SCS became a NoMachine partner in 2006 to allow customers to access the media and publishing applications provided by SCS and installed on Linux servers at customers' sites, from either local or remote workstations, typically Windows PCs. Some users work in the same location as the servers and some are accessing the servers remotely.
SCS was the first newspaper vendor to adopt and promote the use of Linux and Open Source software. Linux was selected for SCS's development environment because of its stability and flexibility. SCS creates their software, using their own development tools called Spice, in a Linux, virtual machine environment, but customers can run their applications in various architectures and operating systems.
Designed to fit an array of environments, including Linux-based infrastructures, NX was chosen for optimal performance when accessing SCS's applications. SCS customers working remotely now use NX instead of WebTermX for faster and more reliable application delivery in this environment.
Newspaper customers of SCS across the world use NX to remotely and reliably access newspaper industry programs to design and layout papers and ads from anywhere. With NX, SCS customers have a secure and dependable connection to indispensable resources providing simple access for users with demanding travel schedules, allowing them to proof, edit and complete work to meet deadlines from anywhere. SCS sets up the NX environment and customers are able to easily access applications and programs right away without any training.
Martha said, "As newspapers try to cut costs, one of the solutions for groups of papers is centralization of production services, increasing the number of remote users especially for Layout-8000 for display ad dummying and SCS/ClassPag for classified pagination. We use NX to provide our remote customers with a reliable and fast connection to the centralized server."
"NX has a highly noticeable speed performance difference compared to other remote access solutions. We include NX exclusively in all of our proposals for the Linux Server because we want to offer our customers the best solution possible. We also use NX ourselves here at SCS to connect to our internal network remotely to provide support for our customers and perform other important tasks while traveling or at home."
Customer Examples
Sun Media Group, one of Canada's leading publishers of daily and non-daily newspapers, magazines, and specialty publications, is deploying NX in over 30 Linux-based publications. Flexibility is a top priority in a deadline-driven environment and with the SCS and NX software combination, Sun Media journalists can lay out any paper from any of their four sites, quickly and securely from wherever they might be resulting in efficient, profitable and well-designed editions.
Software Administrator for Sun Media, John Mosley said, "With Layout 8000 from SCS and NoMachine NX we are able to lay out our papers faster without the need to travel. Everything we need is at our fingertips, no matter what our location is, creating an easily manageable network. NoMachine NX's seamless training and set up makes it easy to use and make adjustments along the way as well."
The Derrick is another publication customer of SCS using NoMachine NX daily to access Admax and Layout 8000 applications on the Linux host from users' desktops. Users can easily access the NX Server from various locations to run any application on any PC. The Derrick also found NoMachine NX to be cheaper than competitors, creating an affordable remote access solution.
Systems Administrator for The Derrick, Jon MacPherson, said "NoMachine NX allows us to efficiently and effectively run publishing applications that drive our business. While out of the office and outside normal business hours, we can connect to the server and work just as if we were there. This flexibility has also benefited IT staff in their trouble shooting efforts from remote locations. Any system challenges that arise can be managed immediately on the server infrastructure remotely."
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