MS joins the chorus

Here is some breaking news - that can give a BIG BIG boost - to thin client computing.
http://www.intelligententerprise.com/channels/applications/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198701971

Despite its former reluctance to support thin-client computing, Microsoft is now loosening up on its stand. First, they are going to permit streaming Vista directly to thin clients, allowing it to boot from the network instead of a local hard drive. The other change is a new subscription license called Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktops (VECD). VECD lets customers to host Vista as virtual machines on something like VMware or Virtual PC.

With the company married to desktops, now changing its stand, thin clients will now move beyond being just-another-distraction on the side.

Breathe Easy - Go thin

Did you know that thin clients contribute to lesser carbon-dioxide emissons into the environment ?
http://ec.europa.eu/research/infocentre/article_en.cfm?id=/research/headlines/news/article_07_03_29_en.html&item=Infocentre&artid=3677

Breathe easy…...go thin.

Gung Ho VIA

Noises from the market….. this time its VIA, who is gung-ho on the thin client market in India exploding.
http://www.itvarnews.net/news/journal_comments.asp?JournalID=4288&PagePosition=1&sTitle=VIA%20focuses%20on%20Indian%20Thin-Client%20market

IT Nirvana = Virtualization

Heres an interesting case study of another happy customer who has ventured into virtualisation - with the help of hp.
http://www.datastorageconnection.com/content/news/article.asp?DocID=%7B7E658C6C-FCEB-4DA3-B70D-70DCCA34C6B6%7D&Bucket=Current+Headlines&VNETCOOKIE=NO

More and more customers are now discovering the one unfailing path to IT Nirvana…..Virtualisation.

The link includes a detailed case study - do go through.

The Shrinking Datacenters

"Data centers are changing in size; some are getting smaller and more nimble, while others are increasing both in capacity and square footage. However, the one constant is that many large enterprise facilities are either increasing bandwidth, linking branch offices into one corporate headquarters site (and therefore increasing size) due to better fiber-optic connections across town or even between cities, or consolidating services and creating vast virtualized environments to such a great extent that the data center is shrinking."

A key factor enabling this shrinking of data centers is : server consolidation and implementation of virtualization technologies (both on server and storage side). This is logically followed by a second phase where existing desktops and laptops are converted to thin computing.
http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/P2912/23p12/23p12.asp&guid=

The implication for IT marketers evangelising thin computing is : to keep an eye on companies adopting any virtualization related technologies - or going in for server consolidation. These are the customers who will be most likely to adopt thin client computing in the near future.

Vista : Gods gift to thin client computing !!!

Heres an interesting snippet that quotes Wyse CEO Tarkan Maner:

"Vista was God’s gift to Wyse". "When Vista's launch was announced, I was partying at home. I am not exaggerating. I bet it’s a phenomenal OS, but it requires so much memory."

Also talks about how Wyse and Novell are working together to create the thin client ecosystem - which he hopes, will help in eventually selling to ISPs and telcos offering broadband services that come bundled with thin clients for the home.
http://software.seekingalpha.com/article/30326

A time for SBC, A time for VDI and A time for Streaming....

Client Virtualization in its most basic format is : Server based computing…. a scenario where hunderds of client devices connect to one server image. One of the reasons why "thin clients" in their earlier avatar did not take off was because, the minute the complexity of the applications hosted on the server increased, the thin client solution was found wanting in performance.

A spate of new technologies have now given a new lease of life to thin clients - main among them being, VDI (Virtual Desktop Interface), Application Streaming and CCI (Client Consolidation Infrastructure).

Below is an amazingly insightful article written on "When to use VDI, when to use server-based computing, and how Application streaming fits into all this".

Do take time to read this article - this is a really good one :
http://www.brianmadden.com/content/content.asp?id=682