Thin client computing comes of age

Thin client technology has come of age and can help boost security and trim IT costs, according to a panel of users.

With the PC now 25 years old, a number of competing technologies - such as thin clients and new entrants like blade PCs - are providing companies with more options. Last month Gartner warned the PC will face more competition as cheap bandwidth and processing power make new styles of application delivery possible

Frank Norton, IT director at US law firm Morrison Mahoney, has just completed a rollout of 400 thin clients in all of the firm's offices. "The reason for that was TCO [total cost of ownership]," he said.

Speaking at an HP-sponsored roundtable event in New York, Norton added: "We are seeing definite savings on costs. Our helpdesk calls have dramatically reduced. With servers out in branch offices they didn't have computer rooms so they would stick them in a closet which wasn't good for the computer."

Norton said another source of savings was that with thin clients there is no need to set up a new PC when a lawyer moves between offices as all the data is held at a central site, not on the desktop. Lawyers can also log into the system remotely.

Max Hunsicker, director of IT services at the National Heritage Academies schools network, has recently rolled out HP 3200 thin clients for use by children and teachers.

The technology is now mature, he told silicon.com: "We considered them three years ago but the technology simply wasn't there."

The thin clients are usually set up in the classrooms but are also moved into one room when the students have exams. Hunsicker said thin clients are a better option than laptops. "We needed to be able to set up three computer labs per school for two weeks and then they need to be dismantled," he explained.

And Don Griffin, director of infrastructure research and development at nursing home group Beverly Enterprises, said increased data security was one motivation behind his rollout of 9,000 thin client devices. "You want to know where your data is. If they walk away with the thin client they walk away with nothing," he said.