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What are the benefits of a central service?
The 3-Heights™ Document Converter makes sense even with just a small number of
workstations since there are economic benefits and qualitative gains.
The following table summarizes the benefits of central service vs. local software:
Client Based
Server Based
Scalability
Workstation computing power is
the limiting factor in conversion
performance
Load balancing enables perfor-
mance to be scaled as desired
Installation and maintenance
Conversion software needs to be
deployed to every client, and to
be configured by the users
One centrally configured and
maintained software installation
User support
Hotline and remote assistance to
fix problems on the workstation
Problems can be reproduced in
the test environment, then a
lasting fix can be implemented in
production
Unattended operation
Workstation-based conversion
often involves manual user
actions (responding to dialogs,
acknowledging messages, etc.)
The conversion process runs with
no manual intervention; the ser-
vice itself controls native applica-
tions as required
Variety of input formats
supported
Native applications must be
installed on the workstation to
handle each proprietary input
format, limiting the number of
supported formats
Standardized formats are conver-
ted directly; proprietary formats
need just one centralized instal-
lation for all users
Application versions and
configuration differences
Workstations may have different
application versions installed,
with configuration variances
Centrally installed and confi-
gured software ensures output
documents with uniform and
consistent quality
Robustness
Users must deal with possible
disruptions caused by installa-
tion and configuration pro-
blems, or conflicting
applications
The service runs each application
in its own protected environ-
ment, monitors and automati-
cally restarts them when pro-
blems arise
© 2016 PDF Tools AG – Premium PDF Technology
White Paper – 3-Heights™ Document Converter, page 6/18
