FontAgent Pro delivers replicated font server
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Nov 18, 2008 at 6:59pm
Insider Software has announced the immediate availability of FontAgent Pro Server 3, which incorporates what the company says is the industry’s first and only replicated font server technology. In addition, the new release adds advanced directory services integration as well as security and performance enhancements that significantly widen its technical lead over Extensis Universal Type Server (UTS).
FontAgent Pro Server 3 is the first font server to enable organizations to establish redundant, replicated font servers across their enterprise so users can enjoy top performance as administrators distribute server load, the company says. Administrators can make changes to a master font server, which replicates the changes automatically and transparently to all remote servers.
With the new release, FontAgent Pro Server’s zero-config directory services implementation automatically sees users and groups in LDAP and Active/Open Directory servers, eliminating the need to keep a separate list of users and groups in the font server.
FontAgent Pro Server 3 enables administrators to assign privileges to users and groups who are best suited to perform specific tasks. For example, administrators can maintain ultimate server control, but assign design managers the right to upload fonts, create and edit sets, and edit font license information. In addition, admins can grant privileges to users that apply only to their workgroup and not the entire organization.
FontAgent Pro 3 allows Font Agent Pro users with proper privileges to create sets of server-based fonts and upload them with a click, and then edit the sets later as they require.
FontAgent Pro now encrypts all user and password information with AES 128-bit encryption and sends it to the font server, which can authenticate users locally or through enterprise directory servers.
Built on a multi-threaded architecture that takes advantage of multi-core servers and eliminates I/O bottlenecks, FontAgent Pro Server 3 can handle tens of thousands of fonts and users unobtrusively and with unequaled speed, according to the Insiders. And its new smart caching of recently downloaded fonts reduces CPU load and syncs clients at rates 8-10 times faster than Extensis UTS, they add.
FontAgent Pro Server requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later, 30MB of disk space and 256MB of memory. FontAgent Pro Server supports a range of Mac hardware, from dual G4 Macintosh computers up to and including Apple’s Mac Pro multi-processors. It doesn’t require dedicated server hardware and permits administrators to fine-tune performance to compensate for varying speeds on enterprise networks.
FontAgent Pro Server is priced at US$1,695 per server, and the master replication server costs $2995 US. Each user connecting to the server requires a licensed version of the FontAgent Pro connected client, whose retail cost is $129.95 per seat with volume pricing available.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
