About Snit Computer

Snit Computer Company, Ltd, based in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan, was founded in 1983 to provide software solutions to the hotel industry. Their flagship product, HMS AG3, is a Microsoft® Windows® application designed to allow Japanese hot spring hotels and large resort hotels, which offer many onsite amenities and activities, to schedule and manage guest reservations and services and enable front desk operations and accounting.

‍The Challenge

For stand-alone hotels, Snit Computer delivered HMS AG3 implementations as an on-premises system, where a physical server is located on hotel property and the application is accessed by front desk personnel and the back office accountant using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) via the hotel’s local area network.

For hotel chains, Snit Computer installed HMS AG3 on a physical server in the chain’s reservation center, using RDS to provide remote access for local and remote reservation agents, front desk personnel, and the accounting department via a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

For both use cases, hotel IT staff would manage the server and the application post-implementation, with Snit Computer providing support. Both stand-alone and chain hotels found that the HMS AG3 implementation model met their needs and was easy for existing hotel IT staff to manage—until changes in Windows Server® 2019 added new complexity.

In 2019, Snit Computer was preparing a proposal for a new hotel chain customer, intending to use their standard architecture and deployment model with the newly-released Windows Server 2019. However, when reviewing the changes in Windows Server 2019, Snit Computer realized that in order to use RDS, they would be required to build a new Active Directory server—and their customers would be obliged to support it after implementation.

This new stipulation would require every customer using Windows Server 2019 to make additional IT investments in server setup and maintenance and would make system configuration considerably more complex. Additionally, the change would require Snit Computer to make costly updates to HMS AG3 and would also increase licensing costs, directly impacting profitability. Passing along the additional cost to customers would remove a competitive advantage and potentially cause Snit Computer to lose existing customers.

As anticipated, Snit Computer’s new customer pushed back on the additional investment required for implementation; soon after, an existing customer moving to Windows Server 2019 reached out to ask about alternative approaches to RDS to avoid the additional cost and complexity driven by Windows Server 2019. Snit Computer knew that in order to continue growing their business, they needed to adopt an alternative approach to using RDS to publish HMS AG3 and make it available to their customers’ employees.  

‍The Solution

Snit Computer turned to KitASP, a GO-Global® reseller located in Tokyo, Japan, for an alternative to RDS. KitASP suggested GO-Global due to its unique architecture that provides full replacements for Microsoft’s multi-session functionality and its Remote Desktop clients, display driver, protocol, internet gateway, and management tools. Because GO-Global eliminates the need for RDS components to be installed on Windows desktops or servers, Snit Computer could publish HMS AG3 using Windows Server 2019 without using RDS, thus avoiding the need to build an Active Directory Server.

Intrigued, Snit Computer requested an evaluation license from KitASP to conduct internal testing.

Snit Computer’s initial evaluation focused on connection stability and speed, compatibility with HMS AG3, and the ability to easily print to a local printer (a requirement during the guest checkout process). GO-Global easily accommodated those initial requirements, so Snit Computer worked with KitASP to build a full GO-Global implementation onsite in one of the hotels owned by the new customer that had pushed back on implementing HMS AG3 on Windows Server 2019.

After training on HMS AG3, the hotel proceeded to use the software published by GO-Global in their everyday operations and enabled access to guest records and reservations by other hotels in the chain.

Results

Snit Computer and its new customer were very pleased with the results from the onsite test. The hotel chain employees found that when published by GO-Global, HMS AG3 responsiveness and speed improved, even when accessing guest records from a remote location, making their jobs easier while providing better service to guests.

Snit Computer confirmed their initial observation when conducting their internal test that configuring GO-Global to publish their software to be easier and faster than using RDS, which would reduce their operational and implementation costs. The hotel found managing the onsite implementation to be simple and straightforward, reducing their IT costs. And, said Masami Sato, Director, Solution Systems at Snit Computer, “Both Snit Computer and our customer were hugely relieved that GO-Global enabled us to avoid the necessity of building and managing a new Active Directory server as dictated by Windows Server 2019.”

GO-Global delivered additional advantages, too. Since GO-Global prices licenses by concurrent user, HMS AG3 customers only pay for users who are accessing the application—unlike Microsoft, which charges for each named user—which delivered additional savings. Mr. Sato noted, “Given that hotels operate 24/7, with employees on duty at all times, GO-Global’s concurrent user pricing was a significant benefit to our customers versus the named user pricing model used by Microsoft.”

Executive management for the hotel chain running the onsite test highlighted another GO-Global benefit. While RDS allows users to delete and copy files, GO-Global’s Admin Console, accessible by the GO-Global administrator only,  controls and maintains all user settings and permissions, including copy/paste and delete. Said Mr. Sato, “Our customer noted that GO-Global’s ability to restrict users’ access and actions would significantly reduce the risk of information leaks. This was a driving force behind their purchase.”

Based on the excellent results from the onsite test, Snit Computer has begun the process of  replacing RDS with GO-Global in existing customer implementations to simplify their IT operations, make HMS AG3 faster and easier for hotel staff to use, and reduce licensing and management costs.

“Providing our software to customers from our private cloud rather than as an on-premises solution benefits us and our customers. Customers will be able to onboard quickly and painlessly. Their operational burden when running our software will be significantly reduced. And we will gain a significant competitive advantage.” - Masami Sato, Director, Solution Systems, Snit Computer

Additionally, the company is leveraging GO-Global to begin delivering HMS AG3 as a service from Snit Computer’s private cloud. Said Mr. Sato, “Providing our software to customers from our private cloud rather than as an on-premises solution benefits us and our customers. Customers will be able to onboard quickly and painlessly. Their operational burden when running our software will be significantly reduced. And we will gain a substantial competitive advantage.”

‍About GO-Global

GO-Global enables organizations to publish Windows® applications from any public, private, or hybrid cloud, to any device that supports a browser. Using GO-Global, IT can deliver Windows applications at up to 40% less than Microsoft® RDS and up to 70% less than VDI solutions from Citrix® and VMware®. Despite its low cost, GO-Global delivers enterprise-level scalability but is easy to install, configure, and use, with considerably less technology overhead required for implementation. For more information, visit  www.graphon.com.