Thin Clients: The Latest Fashion in Network Computing - Industry Trend or Event
With all the manageability and cost concerns about bloated PCs, users are looking for slimmed-down clients to improve the manageability and total cost of ownership of the network. Will thin clients be the latest network fashion queens, or just a passing fad?
Managers fed up with the costly hassle of personal computers are looking at the thin client device in any of a variety of forms for relief. Despite the weaknesses of the network computer (NC), thin client setbacks such as the collapse of the NetPC, and the general lack of support for thin client technology, organizations continue to hang their hopes of desktop cost savings on the thin client.The latest hope is Microsoft’s Terminal Server, formerly codenamed Hydra, a multiuser version of Windows NT intended to be used with Windows-based clients, thin or not. With Terminal Server, which incorporates WinFrame NT multiuser technology from Citrix Systems Inc. (Ft Lauderdale, Fla.), a Windows NT server will be able to run Windows NT applications for multiple concurrent users. Sitting at a thin client, probably a stripped-down and locked-down PC running any of several flavors of Windows, a user can log onto the NT server and run Windows applications there as if the applications were running locally. But the only thing actually going over the network will be the client keystrokes and the client display.
For system managers, Terminal Server will eliminate the need to install and maintain Windows applications on every desktop, which has proved to be a costly nightmare. Even with electronic software distribution and remote system management, organizations have not effectively cut the cost of maintaining desktop PCs because of the variety of desktop configurations found in organizations. With thin clients, there will be no software to load and maintain on client devices, nothing for users to fool around with. All software is loaded, run and maintained centrally, which should result in significant cost savings.
The Gartner Group, a Stamford, Conn.-based consulting group, in a series of widely publicized and often disputed studies, pegs the annual cost of owning a PC at $11,900. Only about 20 percent of that cost is the capital cost of the PC. The rest of the costs are soft costs related to the administration and support of the devices, including the cost of the time users spend fiddling around with their machines, a debatable figure that Gartner dubs the futz factor.
Thin client vendors tout savings of 39 percent for users running thin clients rather than fully configured Windows PCs, which, based on the Gartner study, translates into $17,000 per desktop over 5 years. Multiply the savings by hundreds or even thousands of desktops, and the results can be staggering. Dismissing the skeptics who challenge the Gartner numbers, Michael Kantrowitz, executive vice president, Neoware Systems Inc. (King of Prussia, Pa.), argues: "Even if the savings are half of that, or even a third, it still comes out to a lot of money."
One early adopter of Windows NT multiuser computing claims savings of $500,000 a year. Jin Kim, principal of Computing Solutions (Denver), a systems integrator, used the Windows NT multiuser solution from Exodus Technologies Inc. (Bellevue, Wash.), called NTerprise, for a company running a collection of Macintosh, Windows and OS/2 desktops as thin clients and eliminated a host of costs just around access to e-mail and Office 97 applications. "You can run Windows NT applications without having to upgrade your desktops to Pentiums. You can run the latest applications on old desktops. That’s a huge savings just in upgrades," says Kim.
Although early adopters report success, thin client critics ridicule the devices, and even its supporters see it as a throwback to the days of dumb terminals attached to minicomputers and mainframes. "With [Terminal Server], NT servers are becoming like mini-computers a decade ago," observes Greg Blatnik, vice president, Zona Research Inc. (Redwood City, Calif.).
With Terminal Server, Windows NT also becomes a lot more like UNIX, which has long supported thin client, multiuser computing, giving UNIX added appeal in large organizations that take a centralized approach to end-user computing. In the case of UNIX, the thin client is the X terminal, a network-connected terminal just smart enough to display color graphics. Today, some Windows NT multiuser third-party vendors, such as Insignia Solutions Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) and Exodus, provide Windows NT support for X terminals.
NC: The Thin Client’s Father
The thin client, mainly in the form of the NC, was heralded as the cure for all that ailed PC management and administration a year and a half ago. Led by Oracle Corp., the proponents argued that the NC would eliminate the need to purchase and continually upgrade desktop hardware. Support costs at the desktop would drop to zero as clients plugged the devices into the wall and accessed all their applications and data on the server across the network. Nothing could go wrong on the desktop because nothing resided there. Users had nothing to install and configure. Any management and administration could be handled over the network.
Leave a Comment