[ale] advice needed.

[Atlanta Geek]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Let me try to give back info to all of
you. Here is a little more info.
We sell test equiptment for cable networks.  We have two peices of software.
1. A web server app that can manage up to 1000 handheld devices (I
called users in the original description) through ethernet interface.
2. We also have a windows app that can manage a few devices but it is
through a usb/serial port interface and replicates a good bit of the
functionality of the web server app

The cost of replicating functionality on two code sets is becoming
expensive so of course marketing would like us to focus on the web app
and maybe move the web app to the smaller offices. I said 20 users but
Im think marketing wants to replace the windows app completely.


Jim Kinney
This isnt limited to 1000 concurrent users. Instead it is 1000
registerd devices/users.

Joshua Kite
The admin, install and backing up the web app in smaller offices could
get expensive.  And when I say smaller offices these might be offices
of larger organizations. So IT is not involved in the decision process
or support process. And this is why I think that the real solution is
SAAS.
I also thought there might be a way to run a vmware image that would
almost set up itself. Stealling a lot of the configuration information
from its host machine.

And if the image's disk is writable backups would be a snap. (Stop
vmware. Copy file. Start vmware)

Chris Fowler
In previous emails it seems that you have solved the same problems I
am struggling with.
The 3 piece info approach is what we are planning to do on our SAAS.
And we have attempted to do the web interface approach as well.
Actually we just do it on the console of the server with a menu driven
script.  This works well when setting up the server initially.  I dont
have the resources to setup the full admin interface yet.

Robert Reese
Well there is also some C code involved. Not much but enough to where
we cant just make a copy of the app and run on windows.  It needs to
be recompiled.

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Anyway the virtual machine  seemed like it would be a great approach
because It could just look like a service  on the customer's PC and
the customer's exiting backup solutions may work already. And Id
thought setup would be simplified as well.