Datatrend Newsletter: 1Q 2008

President's Perspective

Thin Clients TCO Issues

Evolution of Thin Clients

That the theory of thin client computing has been around since the early 1970s? It was at that time that the world of computing was transitioning from the switches and contacts of its early days to the more human-machine interactive mode of using keyboards to input data.

[ read more ]

Virtualization - 3rd Party Solutions

Case Studies

Case Study #1- Healthcare Industry
A Fortune 500 organization serving the healthcare industry with productivity and resource utilization solutions, including graphical representations of a hospital's floor plan so users can determine exactly what is happening with patients at any given time by looking at screen displays.

Case Study #2- Data Solutions Company
This is a data solutions company and business process outsourcing provider that specializes in the collection, storage and processing of marketing data. Their services include opinion research and inbound customer service call centers. This company is rapidly becoming one of the largest Spanish-speaking phone centers in the country.

[ read more ]

TechTip: Description of the Remote Desktop Protocol Architecture

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President's Perspective

Why You Should Look at Thin (Virtual) Clients
Over the past year, all of the issues of TrendSetter have addressed certain aspects of infrastructure optimization. However, until this issue, the insight and technical overviews have aligned to more traditional data center workloads. In this month's issue of TrendSetter, we are focusing on thin client, with also some particular focus on virtualizing thin client ... or virtual client.

With competent initial assessment work, followed up by good solution design work, the path to incorporating a thin client solution will be clear of material bumps, and will yield substantial cost savings and manageability benefits. Leveraging virtualization with the thin client initiative provides even more efficiencies. Building a business case to migrate from traditional desktop to a thin client solution should be fairly easy for most organizations.

A few years ago, I would say that moving to thin client may not be justifiable for other than fairly large organizations. However, with the advent of new technology and dramatically lowered price points, smaller to mid-sized companies, too, should seriously look into this growing trend in optimizing the enterprise's desktop requirements.

Any concerns about user adoption can be easily offset with education. The informed user will have a capacity on demand capability with less periodic maintenance and inconvenience as currently experienced in the traditional desktop environment.

I hope you enjoy this issue of TrendSetter. As always, should you have any follow on questions to this edition's content, we would be happy to help you. We hope you have a great 2008!

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Thin Clients TCO Issues

One of the hottest buzz-words out in the IT world today is "thin-client." Though the term may make you think of something diminutive, it is actually used to describe a system that can pack a lot of punch.

The idea of thin clients has actually been around a while. The term originated in the 1990's to describe the new breed of devices such as X Terminals and Windows-based terminals that run "thin" or pared down operating systems locally as opposed to the traditional operating systems like Windows.

Today that term refers to a "stripped-down" computing device with lower processing power than a standard PC. It works with a host server computer in a client/server computing model. Thin-clients do not have hard drives. They execute required applications over a network or via the internet.

According to Stephane Verdy, Chief Technology Officer at Devon IT, a leader in thin-client solutions, thin-client computing can cut 30-70% in IT operational costs. But to understand if moving to thin-client computing is right for your organization, there are a few things to consider.

What is the real cost of your IT?
How many IT Directors know the exact amount of their power bill each month? Chances are, not many. The power bill may go directly to the accounting department, or the IT energy costs may be combined with the rest of the organizations. Either way, knowing your actual IT costs such as power consumption, software upgrade/renewal cost and frequency, equipment refresh cost and frequency are important things to be aware of when considering a change. Only when those expenses are clearly mapped out, will you be able to accurately measure your savings potential.

How can I justify the cost of this change?
Another item that should be considered when deciding whether or not to move to thin-client computing is how long it takes to get back up and running after a breakdown. It's no secret that time is money, so when employees are without the equipment they need to do their job, then the productivity time lost adds up quickly. Factor in the time it will take your staff to transfer over files and applications to the new machine, and that can potentially be an expensive and time-consuming procedure.

Verdy estimated that the average lifespan of typical desktop computers is 2-3 years. This estimate is not reflecting how long it takes before the technology becomes "old." This information pertains to how long the equipment itself will last. Thin clients last an average of 7-10 years, and stations can be up and running in no time. Because all the data is centrally located on the servers, there is no need to switch over data and applications, making this an extremely flexible solution.

Maintaining the security and integrity of data is a challenge that all companies face. With thin-client computing, there are no hard drives and no disk drives. No unauthorized applications may be installed and nothing can be downloaded without proper credentials. These features alone eliminate the risk of viruses and other harmful items from compromising the security of your infrastructure.

Analysts predict that thin-client computing will become a $1 billion market over the next 5 years. Conversion to thin clients will give you a more resilient business infrastructure. IT executives everywhere are seeing that moving towards virtualization and thin-client computing is not only something that they can afford to do, but they are seeing that it is something they really can't afford NOT to dos. As with all technology, knowing the complete applicability of this solution is probably still years away. The known benefits are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a solution that boasts the flexibility of a thin client infrastructure.

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Evolution of Thin Clients

Did you know...
That the theory of thin client computing has been around since the early 1970s? It was at that time that the world of computing was transitioning from the switches and contacts of its early days to the more human-machine interactive mode of using keyboards to input data.

Early computer hardware was very expensive and complex. Because of this, multiple users were assigned to a single machine. When more users needed to be added, more input/output devices were added as opposed to buying more machines. The data collection and computing was done in a centralized location and "dumb terminals" were used to allow multiple users to access this information at the same time. The thin client idea was born.

Personal Computers Make Their Debut
Over time, as is the case with most technology, the microprocessors that are the heart of computers became more common and less expensive. This breakthrough in the late 1970s brought us into the era of the personal computer. It was now possible (and affordable) for companies to own multiple computers, and workers were more likely to be the sole user of the machine. The major difference between these new devices and the ones of a decade ago is the fact that all of the processing computing is done within the individual machine, as opposed to a large, centralized machine server.

While the price of hardware continued to drop because of continuous technological advances, the cost of maintaining, repairing and implementing the computers rose dramatically. This "fat client" as it was sometime called, took on a life of its own. Multiple layers of hardware and software were now required to keep the computers up and running efficiently. Returning to the "simple" days of dumb terminals and centralized computing seemed impossible but the 1990s brought an era of information technology wizardry that the dumb terminals of yesterday could not keep up with.

Returning To Our Roots
The late 1990s brought with it a host of predictions and theories that because of the increased availability of web applications and growing network bandwidth, the thin client will reign supreme over the personal computer. At the end of 2005, it was ambitiously estimated that the thin client market share would skyrocket to 85%. This year, IDC estimated even more growth, with shipments increasing 20 percent annually to reach 7.4 million worldwide by 2011.

What is So Different This Time Around?
Are you seeing a pattern? But what is so different this time around? There are a couple of theories: With the big push for companies to "go green", it has been recognized that PCs are power-hungry, so they increase energy costs and may contribute to global warming. Additionally, since these latest thin clients have an average lifespan of 7-10 years, versus 2-3 of PCs, reducing the amount of times hardware needing to be replaced will naturally reduce the amount of waste.

With the development of new operating systems comes the requirement for computers to be able to support the various applications, and this isn't always easy to accommodate. Thin clients do not have to be operating system specific. Multiple user environments are supported, giving this solution ultimate flexibility and applicability.

The increased need for more secure data storage adds more fuel to this fire. With new federal regulations regarding data storage, encryption and legal discovery being passed, it seems, almost quarterly, the need for industries like banking, insurance and healthcare to demonstrate secure computing is mandatory. The benefits of thin clients in these environments are that data access and security are controlled from one central location, as opposed to on a machine to machine basis.

Most analysts agree that thin-client computing is the next wave of technology sweeping the world. While it got off to a slow, and sometimes rocky start, thin client computing is stepping up to the plate and providing today's technological requirements, in an idea that was born so many years ago.

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Virtualization - 3rd Party Solutions

With virtualization on the minds of IT departments everywhere, decision makers have their work cut out for them when it comes down to choosing the right approach and solution for their company.

Whether an organization chooses server virtualization, desktop virtualization or both depends on what they hope to accomplish. If reducing hardware space requirements and cooling costs are at the top of the list, then server consolidation may be the way to go. If reducing hardware and software costs, the need for upgrades on a regular basis and reducing help desks costs are primary goals, then desktop consolidation or moving to "thin clients" may be the answer. If the desired outcome is all of those reasons and more, then choosing both types of virtualization may be the direction of choice. Whatever method or combination is chosen, the bottom line is that reducing the complexity of your IT infrastructure will increase your bottom line.

Desktop Virtualization
Industry experts estimate that up to 30 million office workers will move to virtual desktops over the next five years, creating a new $1 billion market for desktop virtualization. If you think the virtualization market exploded onto the IT scene overnight, that's because it "virtually" has. Virtualization has been around in one form or another since the 1960s, but it didn't become a buzzword until the last decade.

For most companies, the advantages of desktop virtualization outweigh the disadvantages. "Overall cost though, depends on a company's existing infrastructure as well as the knowledge level of the IT team," said Stephane Verdy, Chief Technology Officer of Devon IT, an information technology company that specializes in thin-client terminals. Once the decision to embark on the desktop virtualization journey is made, the next step is to find the right solution that fits the company's needs.

VMware vs. Xen
VMware holds the largest share of the virtualization market- 85%- and analysts predict that number will drop only slightly to 77% by 2010. The advantages are obvious: VMware has name-recognition as well as a large professional following on their side. Their products have been at the forefront of the virtualization surge, their line of solutions is mature, and their support is solid. These facts aren't deterring the other smaller fish in this pond, from trying to get their piece.

One of these fish is Citrix with a recent addition to their technology family, Xen. Citrix recently completed the acquisition of XenSource, Inc., a company associated with the open-source solution referred to as "Xen." Xen allows you to run multiple operating systems on different layers and "negotiates" hardware usage. The idea behind it is this: operating systems are modified so that they are hardwired to understand when they are running in a virtual environment as opposed to the code-sequence trapping and emulating that older systems needed to complete in order to be able to be virtualized. This approach is called paravirtualization. Since Xen was the first to embrace x86 virtualization hardware extension, the paravirtualization requirement is now a thing of the past.

Another "newbie" to the sea of virtualization is Oracle. Most recently they introduced "Oracle VM" to the Xen field which provides a tuned environment for Oracle apps as well as live migration capability and full software stack support from a major industry application vendor. Since this is such a recent addition, its capabilities, success and popularity remain to be seen.

While it may be a future contender for a larger market share, analysts estimate that Xen holds only about 1% of the market currently partly due to its inability to support a large number of operating systems. Additionally, high availability on Xen is not as robust on VMware, and Xen doesn't support dynamic resources, two features that have contribute greatly to VMware's popularity and success.

Xen does have its advantages over VMware though. Xen is significantly less expensive than VMware, and surpasses VMware in the maximum number of CPUs per virtual machine. See chart below for more information:

	VMware	Xen
Max # of CPUs per Virtual Machine	4	8
Max Memory per Virtual Machine	64 GB	32 GB
Max Memory per Host	256 GB	128 GB

When looking into desktop virtualization for your organization, Verdy recommends speaking to consultants about which approach is the best while considering all of the conditions. He said that knowing all of the options as well as the advantages and disadvantages of making the switch will ensure that your organization will reap all the current benefits- as well as those to come- of desktop virtualization.

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Case Studies

Case Study #1- Healthcare Industry

The Client
A Fortune 500 organization serving the healthcare industry with productivity and resource utilization solutions, including graphical representations of a hospital's floor plan so users can determine exactly what is happening with patients at any given time by looking at screen displays.

The Challenge
With hundreds of desktops to manage, this organization was looking to simplify overall system management as well as reduce administration costs associated with PC upkeep. Other goals included lower operational costs as well as a reduction in administration time. Additionally, because of the many data security and compliance regulations mandated for healthcare organizations, the solution needed to meet strict security requirements.

The Solution
The implemented solution included over 500 thin client terminals with touch screen monitors. All data is stored and accessed from the main server, providing superior security. Since thin clients do not have hard drives or tape drives, the probability for security breaches is further reduced.

The Results

Reduced Power Requirements: With thin clients consuming up to 85 percent less electricity than PCs, this organization has benefited from a significant reduction in electricity costs.
Reduced Staff Costs: Additionally, since the administration of thin clients is performed directly at the server, both IT staff time and money are saved.
Lower TCO, Space Requirements: Other documented benefits include: lower acquisition costs, lower total cost of ownership, system flexibility and reduced space requirements via this small footprint desktop device.

Case Study #2- Data Solutions Company

This is a data solutions company and business process outsourcing provider that specializes in the collection, storage and processing of marketing data. Their services include opinion research and inbound customer service call centers. This company is rapidly becoming one of the largest Spanish-speaking phone centers in the country.

The Challenge
This company has 1000 agents that need the functionality of a computer, but not all of the functions of a traditional PC. Their company was growing, yet the anticipated increase in equipment costs and power consumption was something they did not want to encounter. They wanted be able to add more agents, yet decrease over all power consumption costs. Additionally, because of the large number of employees, they wanted to centralize all administrative tasks.

The Solution
The solution involved working with this company's IT staff to provide hardware and software options that best meets the needs of this expanding organization. About 1200 thin clients were installed at one of their locations. Since all computing power and applications are located at the central server, administration time has been dramatically reduced. Any hardware or software upgrades need to be performed only once; and all of the clients are covered. Any employee can log in from any station in the call center and immediately have access to their specific desktop and data. The company also purchased several backup units that will be used to replace problematic terminals. This decision will ensure that downtime will be kept to an absolute minimum.

The Results
Extended Hardware Life: The average lifespan of thin client terminals is 7-10 years, compared with 2-3 for desktop PCs. Having extra terminals will dramatically reduce downtime, and increase productivity.

Increased Staff while Lowering TCO: The company was able to add more employees to their international location, enabling them to grow that aspect of their business, while not bearing the cost that adding traditional PCs would have brought.

Reduced Administration Costs: All storage and applications are located at the central server, cutting down on administration time and costs.

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Tech Tip: Description of the Remote Desktop Protocol Architecture

RDP is a networking protocol that runs over TCP/IP enabling the transmission of graphical user interface (GUI) information from a host server to a client server through one or more virtual channels.

The graphical bits of the application user interface (UI) transfer over RDP from the host server to one or more thin clients. The thin client caches the graphical bits, and then uses the graphics device interface (GDI) to assemble the bitmaps onto the locally connected thin client display screen in the same manner in which they appear on the host server display screen. This streaming of GUI information enables the remote viewing of and interacting with server-side applications.

RDP includes a network transport layer, a services layer, and an RDP client. The network transport layer is what physical server images use to exchange GUI data over a network. The RDP client caches the graphical bits and uses a set of standard services to display the UI of a server-side application on the Thin Client.

With RDP and Terminal Services, a thin client can connect to a host computer and run server-side applications locally. The user can interact with the server-side application as if he or she was physically touching the host server.

With this network architecture, a thin client on the network is not required to have locally installed enterprise applications and can use a diskless server.

The following illustration shows the RDP client/server architecture:

Tech Tip: Description of the Remote Desktop Protocol Architecture

To enable an RDP connection, both the thin client and the server that is running Terminal Services must have RDP software installed.

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