Thin client will dominate the market again

We all understand that PCs are getting more powerful and powerful. It is not unusual to have a Core 2 Duo desktop in your office nowadays. However, we also understand that thin clients are getting more popular. Why would it fall into two extremes?

What is Thin Client?

'Thin client is also used to describe software applications that use the client-server model where the server performs all the processing' (Chung, Zimmerman & Chandra 2006). Client-server technology has evoluted a new characteristic of "Client". HP, IBM, SUN and even Citrix have been promoting their thin client products. Ho (2006) reported that the growth of thin client sales has reached 279,513 units which is 64 percent over the previous year in the Asia/Pacific (including Japan. IDC says the region's thin client market is projected to expand at a compounded annual growth rate of 34 percent. I can say this has been a significant indication of the IT market trend - thin client again.

'Over the last decade, however, companies have begun to realize the expense and effort involved with administering a PC-based infrastructure. Now, there is a reversion to shifting intelligence and storage back to a centralized location' (Jakobsen 2007). This is a very valid statement according to my experience. My firm has around 600 legal and support staff working across 7 offices located in Hong Kong and Asia. I really find it difficult to deploy 600 workstations even though we have used some tools to install the patches, hot fixes, new anti-virus definition files and add-ins automatically. When we need to upgrade the workstations no matter hardware or software, we need to re-ghost them and reconfigure them one by one. With thin clients, we can save many hours on desktop deployment. For end-user support, we have adopted different kind of remote access software and therefore, I don't really see an issue.

Security is no longer an issue, Users cannot copy the documents (i.e. precedents) from the system. CIO can focus on the server security. But now, we need to block users from using the USB devices on their workstations. Whenever users need to copy documents from or to the system, IT team will handle it for them. Many years ago, my firm were running diskless workstations (i.e. no hard drive and floppy drive), the only storage was the file servers. However, the trend was shifted to heavy clients as client server technology was widely adopted by IT industries. This intended to off load the burden of the server and consumed more clients' power to execute the programs. Probably, because the costs to maintain main frames or mid-range computers were very high and their CPU power, memories and disk space were relatively expensive. Down-sizing was a solution to this problem. But now we all realise that we have incurred other costs to support/deploy desktop computers and theirs applications.

The high availability of ICT systems is vital to the success of business and therefore thin clients, web portals, Internet access, mobile devices and etc. are making you more competitive in the knowledge-based economy. Mark Templeton, CEO and president, has expressed his views on "ubiquitous computing" reported by Ramos (2007, pp 26-27). I will detail "ubiquitous computing" in next blog.

Jakobsen (2007b) refutes that the thin client network will ease end users to remote access their data and emails. This allows network administrators to cost-effectively manage personal computers in the data center, while the desktop users will use standard network protocols to display the results via a simple access device across existing networks. As a result, the network infrastructure enables lower total cost of ownership, greater security, and high reliability, all while providing a consistent, predictable end user computing exprience.

To be continued

References

Chung, K, Zimmerman P S., Chandra, S 2006, 'Networking Definition - Thin client', SearchNetworking.com Definitions, last updated 23 March, viewed 26 May 2007, <http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci213135,00.html>.

Ho, A 2006, 'End of PC life cycle signals thin client boom', Asia's Enterprise All Stars, Network World Asia, vol 2, no 11, p.11.

Jakobsen, J 2007a, ‘Why thin is fashionable again (Part I)’, Enterprise Innovation, Technology, viewed 7 May 2007, <http://www.enterpriseinnovation.net/article.php?cat1=2&id=1351>.

Jakobsen, J 2007b, ‘Why thin is fashionable again (Part II)’, Enterprise Innovation, Technology, viewed 7 May 2007,<http://www.enterpriseinnovation.net/article.php?cat1=2&id=1354>.

Ramous, L 2007, ‘Right place, right time’, Network World Asia, vol 3, no 4, pp. 26-27.