Kent Sutherland, Guest Writer

Corporate views on information technology (IT) methodology rarely coincide, especially about the best applications to make a business super.

For the summer season and beyond, however, tech gurus agree that 'thin' clients are more attractive than 'fat' ones.

For the uninitiated who may grimace at the thin/fat classification, relax, it has nothing to do with ridiculing the overweight.

A thin-client is a hard drive-free network computer that is more robust; it is not a person.

Thin-client hardware workstations usually have no moving parts, which means fewer points of failure and more immunity to malware.

User sessions

They usually operate on a network and depend on a server or servers to present the user sessions.

Only data input and manipulation are done on these computers. Therefore, it means all data processing is controlled at a helm, with all instructions and sessions coming directly from a centralised, secure server.

Thin clients are the opposite of traditional PCs, which are deemed fat because of their hard drives and CPUs.

While PCs are still quite relevant and are used by many companies, forward-thinking IT personnel now encourage thin clients instead of PCs where applicable. Albeit, the concept is not new as Cool Corporation, Pepsi and Scotia DBG are among the chief users of thin-client technology in Jamaica, with these users reporting greater ease of operation as a result of the technology.

More robust, discrete

Some experts contend that thin-client computing will eventually replace many standard PCs in the corporate, industrial and retail environments over the next several years.

This is due to the fact that the prime benefits of the revolution will include lower total costs of ownership.

Each thin-client session is independent from the other thin clients, therefore, configuration typically features a 'thin'-device keyboard, mouse and a monitor linked to an LAN connection.

The benefit of less hardware to purchase is already clear.

And their lack of hard drive minimises data loss if they suffer damage or experience local power failure. They also have no moving parts, since the low-power processor needs no active cooling device.

Pluses all around

Furthermore, prudent companies, large and small, will eventually realise the benefits and cost savings associated with thin-client technology as the effects of hiking global fuel prices wriggle into every aspect of corporate budgeting.

There are more than 12 advantages to this type of technology versus 'old faithful' personal computers. Added to lower hardware bills, recurrent costs are eliminated for expensive antivirus software licences that must be renewed annually.

With a thin client, virus protection is taken care of at the server level, rather than at individual workstations, saving companies an average of US$30 per year for each device.

Operating-system upgrades no longer apply to these systems, resulting in typical cost savings of approximately US$150 every three years.

The long-term savings from thin-client deployment is promisingly substantial, as recent attempts in 'the greening of IT' has been a major factor fuelling the appeal of thin clients.

Power savings are to be expected with these devices as 22-35 Watts-operable thin clients can cut electricity consumption upwards of 90 per cent when compared to 170- 300 Watts-operable PCs.

They also generate much less heat than fat clients, reducing the use of air conditioning.

Added to the power savings are reduced office buffoonery through constant, time-wasting gaming programmes, reduction of data theft and malware, much higher uptimes (typical mean time between failure) for thin clients is 35 years - PCs 3.5 years), low downtimes, and low maintenance. Thin clients, therefore, have much longer life cycles than fat PC clients.

Still, no one is encouraging a conversion so drastic that PCs go flying through corporate office windows as the technology is best fitted for businesses with segments of users that have limited desktop needs. Such operations include call centres, businesses with many branches that typically use the similar application software, manufacturing, or mission-critical businesses with high security standards, such as financial institutions.

Cool Corporation, for example, runs the core business application, Internet browser, and Microsoft Office productivity suite on their thin clients.

Any failure of a user's thin client, which has not happened (but tested for), results in a quick swap with a working thin client, and the user logs back into the network to continue working. This means less thumb-twiddling on the worker's part. Higher profits are likely for these companies.

Fat clients eat bandwidth

Additionally, thin clients make more efficient use of bandwidth since terminal servers are typically hosted on the same high-speed network backbone as file servers.

Hence, most network traffic is confined to the server.

If, for instance a 12 MB document is opened in a fat-client zone, exactly 12 MB will be transferred from the file server to the PC on which it was opened.

When it is saved to the PC, an extra 12 MB is saved to the server. When the document is printed, the same happens again - another 12 MB over the network to the print server and then 12 MB to the printer.

In a thin-client environment, however, only mouse movements, keystrokes and screen updates are transmitted from and to the end-user, potentially consuming as little as five kilobytes per second of bandwidth.

This is the reason thin clients are often used over wide area network connections that link branch offices to the head office.

Computer thieves with interest in computer equipment may have a much harder time fencing thin-client hardware, since it cannot function without a network and a central server.

These devices also thwart thieves by not having any hard drives, sound cards, optical drives or video cards.

Options available

The thin-client market features a spectrum of products ranging from diskless nodes or so-called hybrid clients.

The 'fattest' of theses devices are basically PCs without hard drives that rely on a network server to boot, store information and load applications.

'Zero clients' that have no CPU and similar to X terminals of the past are an option.

Juxtaposed between these options are slimmed-down systems with flash memory and local browsing capabilities, local browser and other applications. Data storage is provided by another server.

Drawbacks

Though the 'thin' technology appears to be cherubic, it has its own drawbacks.

If the network or server should go down, then all the thin clients will go down with it. This is minimised by having spare network devices and server redundancy in place.

Another drawback is that most thin clients do not have the ability to deliver rich video and multimedia content to the end-user.

Despite the real economic and security advantages, thin clients can be a hard-sell to persons used to having fat clients in their environment.

However, given the longer life cycle of thin-client and reduced electronic waste, pundits are on a hot prediction trend about the displacement of fat-client PCs by these thinner network computers.

The advice is to try a thin client in your environment. They are between one third and one half the cost of fat clients.

Kent Sutherland is a pre-sales technological solutions architect at Management Control Systems.