Thin clients come back from the past

John Steele isn't the first CIO to face a gutted technology budget coupled with system-wide pressure to provide more and greater applications and services. Likewise, his solution to implement thin clients as part of the server-based computing infrastructure in the school system for which he works is not as unique as it once was.

It is, however, still new enough to raise eyebrows in an industry that, overall, thinks of thin as obsolete. However, industry watchers say thin is coming back, and in a big way. "It makes so much sense," said Matt Wrabley, executive vice president of sales for Neoware Systems, a company that now has thousands of thin-client customers. "It gives an IT department so much more control."

The kind of control that the average IT department is grasping at involves how to provide the expected level of services in the face of staff reductions, increasing data privacy, and security issues, and how to get more bang out of fewer technology bucks. To regain control over these areas, and others, more IT departments are turning to thin clients.

The average user would be hard-pressed to distinguish a thin client from a PC. Only the thin workstation sits on top of the desk. All that is required for server-based thin client computing to be successful is an operating system that supports thin clients' centralised application and client-management software, and an IT staff knowledgeable enough to run the network.

The growth rate in thin clients -- workstations that provide no local storage in business environments -- will continue to grow this decade, according to an International Data Corporation (IDC) study about thin clients in the enterprise. About 3.4 million enterprise thin clients will ship worldwide in 2007, more than double the estimated 1.5 million that shipped last year, the study said.

That growth indicates a number of obstacles are being overcome, the greatest of which is acceptance in the IT department. Most veteran techs refer to thin clients as something they worked with early in their careers, at a time when mainframes dominated the industry and end users didn't have full computers in their cubes. Thin, in those days, also meant "slow." By the by, PC-based networks and an industry-driven need to constantly "upgrade" soon made thin clients obsolete.

Other obstacles to overcome include end users' resistance to losing their hard drives and a persistent belief on the part of IT managers that performance will suffer in a server-based network.

However, Steele, CIO for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, one of the largest and fastest growing school districts in Canada, said he had other issues to concern him. Budget cuts meant that technology updates were at a standstill and had been for years. This meant the district was hanging onto equipment and software past its period of obsolescence, often to the point that vendors and manufacturers were no longer offering support. Breakdowns were becoming more frequent and repair and maintenance costs were on the rise. "There were constant disruptions," Steele recalled.

With about 88,000 students in 134 schools, in addition to administration and other district departments, these disruptions cost not only money but lost educational time. "We just couldn't afford to send out a tech every time there was a breakdown," Steele recalled.