As you are undoubtedly aware, one of Replify’s main selling points is that the software is trivial to deploy. Our appliances can be deployed on a number of virtual platforms, the clients can be installed on a number of platforms and we can be up and running fairly quickly with no network or user downtime.
When I joined the company, the only client we had was for Windows. However, our CEO is a bit of a gadget freak. He often brings in his latest purchase, plonks it on my desk and asks “Do you think you could get Accelerator to work on that?” In the vast majority of cases after some tinkering about, I come back with a positive answer. This tinkering over time has resulted in our clients for Mac OS X, Ubuntu and Android.
We have also produced, but not productized clients for FreeBSD, iOS and various Linux distributions including embedded ones. The secret to the ease of doing this is due to the excellent choice by our technical team to implement Replify Accelerator as an Erlang application.
Erlang Application
Erlang is a cross-platform language with a very enthusiastic, active and supportive community. This means that we can generally find a port of Erlang for most platforms. From there, it is fairly trivial to get our core optimization engine up and running. Unfortunately, there is more to releasing a new client than “getting it running”. We need to ensure that we can easily install the client software on the end user device, ensure it performs optimally, and that we have an easy mechanism to intercept the user’s traffic and tunnel it via Accelerator.
These tasks vary in difficulty based on the platform we are developing for. The main factor which determines the difficulty is whether or not we are working in a locked down environment. The advantages of such environments are well-documented and have many advantages for consumers. However, it can be frustrating for those of us who want to access the full capabilities of the underlying operating system rather than write silly apps that make fart noises.
If you have any queries on the different flavours of Replify clients or have a request for something specific, don’t hesitate to contact us at sales@replify.com