Clients: Thin, but not dead

The thin client has been attacked as a strange escapee from Oracle boss Larry Ellison's fevered mind, a ploy to attack Microsoft's desktop monopoly, fuelled mainly by envy rather than commercial logic.

However, with desktop PCs still costing up to £5,000 a year to buy and maintain, the total cost of ownership (TCO) argument, which claims that thin clients can cut the cost of providing IT facilities for employees, remains a persuasive one.

According the survey, 79 per cent of companies are looking to reduce their TCO and 22 per cent of these are looking at thin clients as a means to do so.

Company portals and ASPs were also named as a way to cut TCO, though ASP awareness differed radically across different vertical industries.

In the banking sector, which traditionally prefers to avoid new and unproven technologies, only 60 per cent of respondents had even heard of ASPs.

In the more adventurous telecommunications sector, however, a full 100 per cent of respondents had heard of ASPs.

The survey covered all of Compuware's 3,000 clients, ranging from FT 100 companies to the small business market.