Provided you are certain that thin-client computing suits your
organisation, it can lighten the helpdesk's load substantially,
writes Philip Hunter
The first wave of thin-client computing kindled by Citrix in
1996 was driven by a desire to cut the hardware cost of desktops.
At the time, a typical thin-client machine cost about £500 compared
with £1,000 for a fat PC, but now that differential has been eroded
substantially, and the emphasis has switched to total cost of
ownership (TCO).
The component of the TCO with greatest cost-cutting potential is
no longer desktop hardware, given that the price of standard PCs
has fallen to about £500, but the cost of supporting it. This cost
can be broken down into helping end-users with their problems and
performing hardware and software upgrades. The latter can be
substantially reduced by adopting a thin-client model, because the
hardware and software upgrades are now only required on a
relatively small number of servers rather than every client PC.
Thin clients are, in effect, sealed boxes that will never have
hardware upgrades. It is true they still run software, such as
browsers, but this can all be upgraded in a controlled operation
without having to visit each desktop.
As for the helpdesk side this is still needed, but the source of
software problems will now be at the server end, which is a
controlled environment within easy reach, and again there are fewer
elements to deal with.
There is a caveat to all this, which is that the threat by thin
clients galvanised the fat-client movement, and Microsoft, into
action to reduce the TCO and cost of support. The proposition was
that you could still have fat clients with their ability to run
personal productivity applications independently of the network,
but with centralised administration and delivery of applications.
These applications would be maintained and upgraded on servers, but
downloaded to PCs when end-users needed to run them. Furthermore,
some shared enterprise applications developed for the Windows
environment, such as customer relationship management, could be run
centrally with PCs in this case operating in thin-client mode just
handling user interface functions.
This hybrid model does reduce support costs, and even suppliers
of thin-client hardware admit that the potential for further
savings is then reduced. "For a company where there is a well
managed PC environment, savings will be less," said Eva Lilljegren,
managing director for thin-client hardware supplier Boundless
Technologies.
But genuine thin clients still have the potential for further
cost savings, because they lack moving parts, and cannot have
software loaded into them, which itself can be a source of support
problems.
Jane Rimmer, Citrix marketing director, says a significant
proportion of the savings follow from preventing users doing damage
by loading software and data into their PCs. This damage can only
be prevented by use of thin clients.
As a substantial proportion of the support savings - probably
more than 50% - can be achieved just by adopting a centralised
software model with many core applications running on servers via
Citrix or some other multi-user version of Windows, some
enterprises use this as a migration towards a full thin-client
model. In any case, not all applications, and not all end-users,
are suitable candidates for thin clients, as some require the
ability to run locally. This includes power users running
applications that would use too much processing power and memory on
a central server shared by many end-users with less demanding
requirements.
These were all considerations for the publisher Harper Collins,
which is currently migrating towards a thin-client model for some
of its users, but meanwhile is using its existing ageing population
of PCs.
Hilda Brakespeare, IT manager at Harper Collins, says an
important step when implementing thin clients is to identify
clearly the suitable candidates. "We divided our users into those
with core vanilla 32-bit business applications and put them on to
thin client, and those doing more intensive work and put them onto
fat clients running NT on the desktop."
Huge savings have been made, says Brakespeare, although she is
coy about precise figures. "We're aware that we recouped the
investment in two years," she says.
In this case most of the end-users still have conventional PCs
of some sort, but run in thin-client mode with all the applications
running on central servers. "In effect, they're thin clients,"
observes Brakespeare. "Windows 95 is running in the background, but
they can't see it and get a thin-client session straightaway."
The move to thin clients in this case was prompted by a separate
decision to migrate from the increasingly unpopular Novell Netware
to NT. "We realised that it would be quite expensive to replace
just about every PC," says Brakespeare. "We had a mixed client
base, including Macs and Suns, wanting to access NT applications,
and the solution was to implement Citrix Metaframe to centralise
deployment and management. In future, users will be given Windows
terminals because we've run out of PCs now," she said.
Another site that opted for a thin-client solution based on NCD
hardware is the London Fire Brigade. The most visible saving was on
hardware, to the tune of £100,000 a year, but the primary motive
was to cut the cost of supporting desktops at 120 sites around
London, with 1,800 users. Previously, support staff had to visit
the sites to fix problems and perform hardware and software
upgrades. An interesting aspect of the project was the
consideration of the server Windows multi-user software in the
context of support costs.
Citrix was considered, and found to offer strong load balancing
of processes between multiple servers, and also efficient
communication between servers and clients via the Citrix
Independent Computing Architecture protocol. But these features
came at too high a price both financially and, crucially, in terms
of the anticipated complexity of support. It was noted that
Metaframe replaced many standard components within the underlying
Microsoft Windows Terminal Server (WTS) software, motivated by the
laudable desire of improving efficiency, but at the cost of making
it difficult to ascertain where Citrix's responsibility ended and
Microsoft's began. The fire brigade anticipated bucks being passed
between the Microsoft and Citrix helpdesks, and that this would
push up support costs.
NCD's Thin Path server software was chosen instead, partly
because it had a clearer demarcation with WTS and partly because
its load balancing was deemed stronger.
This led Bloor Research to conclude in a report on the London
Fire Brigade installation, that "Thin Path could represent a more
cost-effective option than Citrix Metaframe in a pure Windows
environment where there is a desire to preserve the integrity of
the Microsoft platform".
The report made clear that Thin Path was not necessarily
superior per se, but that it did things differently and would be
better in some circumstances, and should, therefore, be considered.
This is reassuring because it shows that there is at least one
viable alternative for the server piece of thin-client computing,
which should help to keep costs down for a technology whose primary
motive is to save money.
Bloor concluded in its report that the adoption of thin-client
technology has led to a 15% to 20% annual reduction in direct IT
costs at London Fire Brigade. This is modest compared with the
claims of some thin-client suppliers, but Bloor also cited other
support-related benefits. Centralisation of operations has resulted
in improved quality and consistency of service and fewer
"version-related" file sharing problems for users. Bloor also found
that end-users had become more productive because they spent less
time troubleshooting their own problems.
So far, most of the thin-client movement has focused on the
Windows environment, but recently it has spread to the Unix world
as well. Sun has been particularly active with its Sunray terminal,
or Internet appliance range.
According to Sun's thin-client product marketing manager, David
Clewes, similar TCO savings can be made in the Unix environment,
but with the accent perhaps more on the capital costs. For example,
you can buy a single entry -evel Sun Unix server capable of
supporting 20 Sunray thin clients for £2,500. The software for a
single CPU costs £300, and the entry level Sunray 1 costs £200. The
cost, therefore, of a thin-client Unix set-up for 20 users would
start at about £7,000, while the same number of Unix workstations
might cost three times that.
No wonder then that sales of Sunray terminals have taken off,
with as many sold in the UK during the three months to September as
in the whole year before that.
So, perhaps this is the year of delivery for thin-client
technology.
Hands-on helpdesks
The thin-client story encapsulated
For the Microsoft world, the thin-client model with discless
desktops and the core operating system plus the applications
running on servers, was invented by Citrix with its Metaframe
technology in 1996. Metaframe is a layer of software extending NT
to support multiple clients from a server rather than just a single
user operation.
Noting the hype generated, Microsoft's initial reaction was to
thank Citrix for creating the market and then taking it over. But
it became clear that what Citrix had achieved in converting NT from
an operating system that was just multitasking into one that was
multi-user as well was not so easy to imitate quickly, and so the
two companies cobbled up a deal.
Microsoft acquired the rights to essential ingredients of
Metaframe and these were incorporated in its own Windows Terminal
Server (WTS), which remains a vanilla multi-user extension to NT
and now Windows 2000.
Meanwhile, Microsoft cut the rug from under Citrix to some
extent by changing the licensing rules for NT to take account of
the fact that a single version of the operating system could now
support multiple users. Until then, NT had been licensed according
to the number of installations, which equated to the number of
users. But with the thin-client model it became possible to license
a single copy of NT and deploy it a number of times to users whose
thin-client machines did not run the operating system. Microsoft
closed the loophole by matching the licence to the number of users,
rather than machines.
This, as David Perry, worldwide director of marketing for
thin-client supplier NCD, noted, reduced the basic capital cost
saving that could be achieved by going for thin clients, because
more had to be paid for the Citrix software. "This combined with
the reduction in entry level PC costs [fat clients] has reduced the
disparity between PC and thin-client costs significantly," said
Perry. Some disparity remains, but the emphasis is now firmly on
the total cost of ownership (TCO) savings.
While Citrix continued to dominate Windows server-based
computing as realism replaced the hype between 1997-99, there were
a few other contenders for the server piece of the action, notably
NCD with its Thin Path. Both NCD and Citrix use WTS for the basic
multi-user functions, but enhance these with additional features,
notably load balancing, so that the processing can be distributed
across multiple servers to improve performance and availability.
Citrix stuck to its knitting-in software, but NCD also makes
thin-client hardware, for which it is now probably better known.
Others such as Wyse and Boundless majored on the thin-client
hardware.
A more recent development has been the ability to access the
server-based Windows applications from any browser via, for
example, Citrix' Nfuse technology, as well as conventional thin
clients.
Another recent development is extension of the action to the
Unix world. Unix has always had multi-user operation, but now Sun
has its Sunray range of thin clients, which it calls information
appliances, supporting a more comprehensive range of GUI options,
such as smartcard access. These offer a thin-client option for
power users, offering similar TCO benefits.
The latest chapter in the story features the arrival of SCO's
Tarantella initiative, which competes with Citrix, NCD and
Microsoft on the server side of thin-client computing, but from a
different angle. Instead of being just an extension to the Windows
server operating system, it comprises middleware in between the
client and the server. At the back end it communicates with the
server operating system in the appropriate protocol, such as X11
for Unix, or ICA for NT, or 3270 for IBM System/390, and converts
the instructions into HTML to support front access from a
browser.
In this way clients could be PCs, or any other form of client
capable of running a browser. This could offer potential TCO
savings for larger enterprises wanting to provide access to a
variety of back-end systems, not just Windows, via an intranet. But
for smaller sites accessing just Windows, Citrix, NCD or indeed
Microsoft seems more cost effective.
Potential cost savings in a nutshell
- Cheaper thin-client hardware - less than it was and the costs
of server and possible network upgrades have to be deducted, but
can still be significant
- In some cases cheaper software through reduced licence costs,
although this has to be considered as part of the big
picture
- Reduced IT hardware support costs because clients cannot be
upgraded, and most problems are solved just by swapping
out
- Reduced software support costs, because upgrades now only need
to be effected in relatively few servers rather than a larger
number of clients.
(These savings will be irrelevant if the thin-client model is
deployed for the wrong applications, or for end-users whose
productivity is compromised. Good implementation is more critical,
because with server-based computing problems are amplified to a
larger number of users.)