December 2001

Tale of the tape: thin clients versus fat PCs By Jeff Meredith When it comes time for organizations to cut costs, they may start with what's right in front of you - your personal computer. But don't expect an empty space where your "Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones" movie trailer once played; there might be a device in place which barely allows you to tell the difference. Thin clients, which lack hard drives and run applications off a network server, could grow in number as businesses attempt to slash information technology budgets. Instead of having their IT staffs tied up with workstation upgrades and repair, they could make the migration to an environment where the total cost of ownership (TCO) is dramatically reduced. Forrester Research estimates the TCO for one networked PC to be over $8,000 a year for enterprises, while Gartner places that figure closer to $12,000. Most of this cost is related to software management and troubleshooting, a constant leech on time. Brad Rowland, director of product management for Wyse Technologies, a San Jose-based company that is dominant in the thin client arena, says interest has increased with the economic slowdown. "Over the last two or three years, there was a lot of money being spent on new office buildings, new PCs. People said 'Oh that's interesting [about thin clients], but who cares? We have PCs, we can afford technicians, life is good, thanks for calling,'" said Rowland. "That's changed probably over the last 6 to 8 months. People are more interested in saving the IT costs." Making IT costs predictable is one of the assurances companies desire, Rowland noted. Unanticipated costs, like viruses, can deliver a crippling blow to company budgets. While thin client users are also susceptible to viruses through network servers, their treatment is vastly different than what you would typically find with PCs and the client/server model. Rowland offers a hypothetical where he is supporting 200 users with 12 servers; he doesn't have to touch any of the compromised thin clients to apply a virus patch - "They see all the changes I've made on the servers, rather than having to do software upgrades," said Rowland. Adoption with resistance Who's using thin clients in the Chicago area? Cook County Hospital has gone fully in that direction, and so has Tempel Steel. Tim Stewart, an account manager for Vector, a Arlington Heights-based reseller of Wyse products, said thin clients are being adopted more frequently. "It's great from an administrative standpoint because you don't have people loading

their golf games or messing around with the PC itself," said Stewart. With this turn to a task-focused work environment comes friction, warns Howie Hunger, director of marketing for IBM Net devices. Hunger says that while the thin clients are best for transaction-based applications, such as call centers and other areas where a large number of employees perform the same task and deal with a centralized pool of data, they're not always the best solution. "You are going to restrict, tightly control what users can do with their devices," said Hunger. "In some enterprises, management doesn't want to limit what the users can do because it represents a political issue in dealing with the employees where they see a loss of freedom." Thin-client desktops typically include a CPU, flash memory, keyboard, mouse and monitor; usually there are no moving parts, no fan or floppy disk drive. Hunger noted a case where a thin client customer considered a floppy drive to be a 'virus insertion device.' Employees may also find thin clients aggravating in that offline work and streaming video support typically become a thing of the past. IBM deployed its first thin client product in September of 1996 with dramatic growth expectations. While the sector has grown 30 to 50 percent per year, thin clients haven't been adopted as expected - "It started with a small base, [it's] still a relatively modest base," said Hunger. An IDC Research study predicts thin-client sales will jump from this year's 1.3 million shipments to 8.7 million by 2005, but Hunger isn't completely sold on projections. "When IBM entered this marketplace, the typical corporate PC was selling for $2,500. It was tough to manage in a client-server system and they took longer to install than anyone wished," said Hunger. "Now in 2001, the price comparison between a thin client and fat PC is not 700 or 800 dollars versus ($2,500). Over those 5 years, PCs have become far more manageable - so the marketplace has changed." While thin clients now start around $400, PC costs have dropped precipitously. Where rapid updates and changes are made to applications, as with the call center example, Hunger sees a thin client market. But not everywhere else. "They can be used for general office work, but that's not where we see the best customer benefit and interest."