U-M faculty and students discover cost-effective, real-time remote access with NX.

About the University

Michigan's oldest university with more than 41,000 students, the University of Michigan is one of the top research universities in the country and is internationally renowned for research spending, academic excellence, and international outreach.

The Challenge

Like many other universities, University of Michigan's School of Public Health was still using the X display protocol, a protocol with notoriously slow data transmission and server response time, for remote access. Professors, graduate, and post-graduate students were accessing interactive intensive programs, such as statistical analysis and editing programs, through X to complete research and projects. As a result, they were losing valuable time. When connecting to the local server, X displayed U-M's statistical analysis and editing programs so slowly that users could not have a real-time, local experience with the program. Session reliability was also low; a session could crash in the middle of a statistical analysis, causing faculty and students to lose hours of work.

The Solution

The University of Michigan chose NoMachine NX to solve these issues, because NX provides a real-time, local user experience, even when users are accessing a server non-locally. By using NX, U-M is able to provide an environment where students and faculty can now simultaneously access the full features of an application or program, with no compromise in session reliability. U-M mainly relies on batch processing, and they find NX most helpful for interactive processing (e.g., completely interactive editing applications).

With NX, U-M can also now share programs and research remotely with other universities—in real time. Because of NX's unique display protocol that accelerates data transmission, each session maintains its fast performance and never degrades.

Results

U-M's faculty and students now have the flexibility to continue research from home and other remote locations, without the need to be on campus. NX sessions, even when accessing interactive intensive programs such as editing, have real-time speed and responsiveness that allow users to easily edit files as if they were working locally.

"NX eased the process for our professors and students to remotely access applications. With NoMachine NX, you can edit as easily from home as you can from work, so we now have the option of working from home," says Senior Programmer for U-M's Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Terry Gliedt

About NoMachine NX Small Business Server

The NX Small Business Server subscription is suitable for small to medium businesses as well as small work groups and branch departments which need secure application and remote desktop access. Allowing up to 10 concurrent sessions you can access files, e-mail, applications, and network resources in real time, efficiently, and securely.

NX security is guaranteed at every layer involved in the communication process. NX uses SSH public-key encryption and 128 bit volatile random cookie generation.