Outstanding features of NetMan Desktop Manager

The full range of NetMan Desktop Manager features will introduce you to the most important ones.

License Management

Maintaining compliance with software licensing agreements is not just a concern for large companies and big industry any more. The legal aspects of software use affect small and medium-sized businesses as well. The ability to carefully monitor the use of your software is an important tool for ensuring strict compliance with software license conditions – and can help you avoid both license violations and license shortfall.

Symbol: License

NetMan Desktop Manager gives you the capability to monitor all of the software in your system and to ensure that:

  • only designated persons or groups can use the licensed applications ("named license" or "named user license" scheme), or
  • only a limited number of application instances can run simultaneously ("concurrent use" licensing scheme)

You can also have NDM keep a usage log for each application, making it easy to keep traceable records at all times.

Furthermore, the NDM suite comes with license management features that let you grant user licenses explicitly to user groups that you create for this purpose. For example, you can reserve a number of your concurrent-use licenses for your company's management team, to guarantee that they will always have access to that program regardless of any usage by other authorized users.

The same versatility can be extended to the distribution of licenses among the company's various departments as well. For example, when an application license is paid for out of one particular department's budget, you might want to reserve a number of licenses for that department.

The integrated License Management tool can also help you determine whether you have more licenses than you need.

It has a Statistics function that can detect what software is being used, by whom and for how long.
In short, NDM's License Management program is a powerful tool for economic optimization of software licensing.

Potential savings on Microsoft Office licenses

The licensing of Microsoft products in virtual environments or terminal server environments often accounts for a large portion of a company's software expenses. Unlike most of the commonly used software products on the market, Microsoft Office products are licensed per device rather than per user. This means each terminal device that could, theoretically, access a terminal server on which the Microsoft Office suite is installed requires a separate MS Office license. In fact, the end-user license agreement explicitly states that it does not matter whether a device uses the software or not. And since access control via group policies is not good enough for Microsoft, the only way to achieve a solution that is both effective and Microsoft-approved is by acquiring additional products.

Thanks to the integrated License Management and Access Control programs in NDM, however, it is easy to maintain legal and traceable licensing even for Microsoft Office products. And the optional Access Statistics utility can provide authoritative documentation of the software usage in your system.

Thus the versatile License Management program in NetMan Desktop Manager enables efficient license management that meets even the stringent requirements of Microsoft. Your benefits include both the savings – potentially substantial! – on licensing costs, and the confidence that your legal software licensing obligations are met.

Jens Lenzing, Microsoft Certified Professional (Licensing Solutions)

Effective program control

NetMan Desktop Manager 5 gives you wide-reaching control over programs and processes on Windows clients.

Locally and in sessions

With NDM, you can block programs and other processes from executing on a client machine if they do not have administrator approval. This effectively prevents malware or potentially dangerous scripts from running, and basically makes it impossible to install or launch unlicensed and undesirable software.

The Program Control utility can restrict user access – both locally and in remote desktop sessions – so that only permitted programs, i.e. programs launched through NetMan. can execute. And you can grant launch permission based on any of a number of factors, including drives, folders, programs, and program certificates. Even if the NetMan Client has not been started in the system – in that case, the NetMan Service can perform the filtering as a basic protection function.

Moreover, the Program Control feature in NDM 5 can prevent the launch of programs on the terminal server without authorization, even if the attempt is made using a roundabout method such as starting from the file explorer.

You can also have NDM 5 log each application call to maintain records of application use. This function also plays an important role in license management, for example in regulating the access and usage of Microsoft Office products to reduce your overall licensing costs.

Symbol: Time-dependent access control

Time-dependent access control

In addition to the familiar access control functions that operate based on user name, group or station identity, or access method, you can also use NetMan Desktop Manager v5 to define time-dependent permission for the launch of applications and resources.

Client drive filter

Symbol: Client drive filter

NetMan Desktop Manager also closes security gaps that result from uncontrolled access to the workstations' locally connected client drives and removable USB storage media. The administrator can specify which folders are accessible on locally connected drives. This effectively prevents the introduction of undesired data and applications during the session.

Internet filter

Symbol: Internet filter

The Internet Filter integrated in NDM 5 can block any URLs to which you have not explicitly authorized access for the requesting user or computer. This cuts down on the distraction of web browsing and helps prevent users from inadvertently downloading Trojan horses or other malware. When the NetMan Desktop client is installed, the filter works both for local browser sessions and within terminal server sessions. With this filter in place, web access is controlled by means of blacklists and whitelists that can easily be edited by the administrator. The filtering mechanisms can optionally be applied to processes, in addition to URLs. For example, even when users are completely blocked from Internet access, you can let their programs open online help sites and the like. The NDM 5 Internet filter supports all common browsers and proxy servers.

Access from any location, with any device

Figure: APP-V Container

The NDM 5 system also makes sure that the necessary applications are always available over a secure connection to employees who are in the field or telecommuting. And remote employees can use practically any operating system and any device. Access can be via the locally installed NetMan Desktop Client, via the integrated web interface (via native Windows web client) or via HTML 5.

The Java client, compatible with most operating systems, enables access over the web interface even when no installation is possible at the client end, or if the client uses an operating system other than Windows (such as Linux or macOS). This gives users maximum flexibility in accessing the applications they need.

Der für nahezu alle Betriebssystem einsetzbare Java-Client ermöglicht den Zugriff über das Webinterface auch dann, wenn keine Installation auf dem Client möglich ist oder ein anderes Betriebssystem als Windows genutzt wird (z.B. Linux oder macOS). Dies gewährleistet hohe Flexibilität beim Zugriff auf die benötigten Anwendungen.

With the AccessToGo client, the authorized applications are also available on iOS and Android.

By making sure that the user's familiar, individual environment is always available, NetMan Desktop Manager enables high productivity regardless of the user's location or device.

Customized Desktops

The combination of Windows Remote Desktop and NetMan Desktop Manager can boost productivity for every one of your employees. Sophisticated application management ensures that all employees have access to the particular information and applications they need, regardless of where they log on to the network.

Figure: Customized Desktops

Easy management even while meeting individual requirements

NetMan Desktop Manager only shows users the applications they require for their jobs - in other words, the applications to which you have given them the necessary access privileges.

This way each user gets exactly the application portfolio he needs for his current tasks – optionally taking into account from where he is accessing the system.

NetMan Desktop Manager allows the administrator to link together various network resources, such as stations, users, system variables and access privileges, in a graphical user interface. In this way the applications can be made to start and run appropriately in the given system environment for each user.

Access privileges and application portfolios are defined and modified centrally by the administrator, and can be shown immediately in the user's desktop. The desktop items managed by NetMan Desktop Manager can be added or removed automatically. Because the users' desktop items managed by NetMan Desktop Manager are maintained centrally, they are always up to date and clearly arranged.

Thanks to this approach, NDM improves flexibility in application and desktop roll-out, and at the same time increases the effectiveness of system administration.

Application serving for unknown users

NetMan Desktop Manager is not only ideal for individualized application service: it also shows its strength where uniform environments such as kiosk systems are needed. For this purpose, NetMan Desktop Manager lets you serve applications to individual stations or station groups connected with anonymous user accounts.

This function makes it easy to provide a fixed application portfolio to changing users, or even to unknown users. Where other solutions require purchasing and mastering several dedicated management programs, NetMan Desktop Manager provides all the required tools in a single package.

NDM integrates applications where Windows users expect to find them

Applications are added to the hierarchical Start menu, or as shortcut icons on the desktop. Thus NetMan Desktop Manager, unlike Microsoft Terminal Server, leaves the users' accustomed working procedures completely unchanged.

NDM: Taming Your Application Menagerie

NetMan Desktop Manager makes it easy to serve compatibility-sensitive applications on the terminal server.

No problem serving virtualized applications

Some applications may have defied virtualization in your system in the past, due to compatibility issues with your terminal server. This is another problem solved by NDM 5. Microsoft App-V or VMware ThinApp sequenced applications can be integrated so seamlessly in the NDM 5 desktop that users cannot tell the difference. Packet sequencing is independent of NDM, and processed in the usual App-V or ThinApp environment.

Figure: APP-V Container
Figure: ThinApp Container

The virtualized applications are packaged for streaming in individual executable files (MSI or EXE) and executed on the terminal server. The application packet contains all required data – no additional components must be installed on the terminal server to enable their execution. Because the applications are completely isolated, execution is conflict-free even with applications that normally cannot run, or cannot run concurrently, on a terminal server.

Deployment examples

If your network has several different build versions of one browser or a number of different MS Office versions, for example, then application virtualization may be the best – or even the only viable option for deployment, as it eliminates the problems that can otherwise result from parallel installation or simultaneous use.

Licensing

The license for use of App-V on the terminal server is included under the RDS CAL, so you can leverage this feature at no extra cost.