VNC Central is a server/client application that semplifies management management of remote computers, expecially groups of computers. Pratically it allows you to launch applications, locally or remotely, replacing automatically the ip in the application parameters with the one belonging to the local pc (if you ask vnc central to launch the application on a remote computer) or with the one belonging to the remote pc (if you ask vnc central to launch an application on your local computer).
This way you can, for example, launch locally a vnc viewer to connect to a remote computer running vnc central just by clicking the connected remote computer name, or vice-versa have a remote vnc server initiate a reverse-connection to your computer running a vnc viewer in listen mode thus solving most of the remote server side firewall/router problems.
VNC Central however is not made only for vnc server/clients applications, in fact you can use any application you like, for example to execute remote tasks (defrag, scandisk etc) or client/server applications you want to work with (for example just click a computer name and connect automatically to their ftp server).
The program interface is very simple, there's a main listbox that shows all the connected computers grouped in a tree view based on how the vnc central on those computers are linked: if you want to launch an application you just have to right-click a computer and select the name of the application (action), that could be a remote application or a local application. VNC Central then will take care of the rest.
VNC Central also supports automatic dyndns update, that you may need if you want other vnc centrals to connect to a vnc central on your local pc that has no static ip.
VNC Central can be useful in many environments, ranging from teaching to customer's support. It is also useful in those situations where you want to avoid user intervention, because you don't want to have customers lose time or you don't want to waste time telling them every time what to do to start the remote assistance.
For example you can :
- keep track of connected customers and take control of their computer when you need to. Also the fact that you can request a server-initiated vnc connections allows you to bypass most firewalls problems
- run a manteinance applications (defrag scandisk or whatever) on multiple remote computers at once.
- see which computers of your network are turned on and shutdown them, turn off their monitors or just make them go standby by using many of the freeware utilities avaiable on internet with vnc central
VNC Central is perfect for deployment on large computers: all the settings are stored in a xml file that you can include with the application, it’s very quiet since it can just sit in the tray or run in hidden mode (you can restore the main window with a special keystroke) and it also has a low memory footprint (less than 1mb when minimized).