Technology Partners

Creating alliances that deliver value

GN ReSound Corporation

A leading global manufacturer of advanced hearing instruments, GN ReSound Corporation improves life for the hearing impaired by giving developers the ability to remotely access their central Linux development environment with NoMachine NX to meet project demands from any location.

NoMachine NX gives GN ReSound Corporation tools they need to improve life for hearing impaired.

About the Company

Developing technology and solutions for the hearing impaired throughout the world, GN ReSound Corporation is a leading manufacturer of advanced hearing instruments in major global markets. With international headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark and North American headquarters located in Bloomington, Minnesota, GN ReSound Group has subsidiaries in more than 25 countries and distributors in an additional 80. They employ approximately 3,300 people internationally and more than 500 at their state-of-the-art facility in Minnesota producing over thousands of new custom earpieces each month. In recognition of its superior product design, dot, ReSound's new hearing aid won one of the most sought after design awards worldwide: The red dot.

The Challenge

GN ReSound's developers needed a secure remote access connection to their central Linux development environment that would enable them to work from home or while traveling, meeting project demands as they arose. Because these developers were designing hearing aids that are some of the most digitally advanced in the industry, including those that offer 3D "surround sound" digital technology (splitting sound into 14 adjustable frequency bands), they needed a solution that would allow them to run some very complex design applications.

Infrastructure Specialist, Jacob Sonnichsen, says, "Many of the applications we use display thousands of lines to be drawn or 3D figures to be rotated, moved, and manipulated. Our current solution could not perform when dealing with these graphics intensive X11 applications. We tested several X servers on it, but were very disappointed with the performance." GN began looking around for a high-performance remote access solution that would display and run their graphics-intensive X11 applications.

The Solution

They ultimately chose NX's Enterprise Server, because it provided the graphical application support they needed. "The competing solutions we looked at did not have anything matching NX for X11 graphical access," says Sonnichsen. "NX is capable of running our graphical applications on any operating system across most network connections real-time. With NX's unique display protocol and smart-caching techniques, it's able to create a much faster, real-time remote access connection than competing solutions."

A fully-featured Unix terminal server and desktop consolidation tool, NX Enterprise Server was able to support 30-40 sessions simultaneously, while still maintaining high speed and session reliability.

NX also provided the secure GUI ReSound's developers needed to connect remotely to their Linux development environment. With industry-standard SSH encryption and integration through PAM with security tokens, NX was able to offer secure data transmission over any link.

Results

ReSound developers are now able to connect to their SUSE desktops and their Cadence Tools, Matlab, Abaqus, Mentor Graphics, and other standard Linux tools and applications. Sonnichsen says, "NX has outperformed other desktop and application delivery methods we have tried. We are extremely satisfied with the performance and are considering NX for suppliers and aid as well. Now with NX, our developers can connect from home or another location and work 24/7 to meet important deadlines."

Networking Environment Key Benefits Applications Delivered
  • NX Enterprise Server
  • Suse Linux
  • Graphical support
  • Increased session reliability
  • High speed remote access
  • Cadence Tools
  • Matlab
  • Abaqus
  • Mentor Graphics
  • OpenOffice
  • Acrobat
  • Other standard Linux tools

About NoMachine NX Enterprise Server

A fully-featured Unix terminal server and desktop consolidation tool allowing users to create, manage and operate an unlimited number of virtual desktop sessions on a single server. Perfect for companies which need to offer a complete set of corporate services to all mobile and on-site employees.