Comment Re:Amazing. (Score 1) 220
I agree that hardware thin clients are not being marketed at the home PC and I don't think sun has even considered this market. But there is much more to thin clients than just cost.
Thin clients have some great benefits for large organisations of many kinds( some of these comments may be specific to sunrays in particular or just generally of thin clients.) The folowing is a collection of points of interest on both the theory and practical application of thin clients.
1. Reduced Admin and maintanence. Remember if all of the processing is being done on the server then admin doesn't need to install anything on each desktop or fix any changes on a desktop that a user may make. Keep in mind this can be a much more signifigant problem when an organisation has users spread of multiple locations.
Upgrades can be done more efficiently and clashes of versions between users can be avoided.
The environment can be controlled much more tightly. In situations where factors such as the version of browers and plugins installed can effect performance of apps this controll of the users environment becomes very inportant.
2. Network traffic can be reduced by processing any data on the server where or near the data store. This can make a large performance difference for apps such as database style apps where the data need not be sent thru the network only the display data. (yes I have done some benchmarking on this did help a lot in some situations )
3.Shared workstations. If all the desktops are identical thin clients then they can simply can be used by several users and keep all the customisation of the current user. This becomes relevant in situations such as call centers with shifts operation or organisations like universities or libraries with public terminals.
This is where the sunray smart cards can be used to their best to swap users instantly by keeping the session live but not tieing up the physical terminal. Thus the number of terminal need only be the number of simultaneous users not the maximum number of users.
4. Another use particullarly relevant to me at the moment. The use of smart cards for hot desktoping enables users to literally pull out thier smart card and walk into a meeting with they session set up for a presentation, demo or even an error to show admin rather than calling admin to walk up and look at their screen.(the mountain to mohammad). The portability removes the need for everybody to have a laptop to do their presentations they mearly need to take their smartcard. Now compare the cost of a sunray to that of a laptop rather than a desktop and see if the saving is worthwhile now.
5. On a software level thin clients are much easier much quicker to develop. Numerous diferent thin clients can be developed to work with the same server and thus allow for a wider range of client interfaces to be designed giving the user a product more specific to their needs and thus easier to use and making the user more efficient, which is one of the goals of all this technology anyway. This model of thin client is increasingly usefully with the 'opening' of commercial software. This means where the vendor supports one of the communication standards like CORBA COM/DCOM and the like the client may be developed inhouse to connect to a commercial backend product even if the backend is a commercial closed source product.
A good example of this is a particular commercial database style product I know of. It is in part a database available on most platforms(not linux yet) and has made availabe thru CORBA/COM/DCOM an interface directly into some of the internal object used in the server. Available with the system are 2 different thin clients with no processing capabilities and will not do much at all without a connect to a server. This does mean that any third party could write a simillar thin client to work in exactly the same way.
The clients can be written in numerous different languages including java and thus can be run in a browser downloading the thin client java app from a web server as needed.
At this stage I feel I am begining to go off the point and getting into too much detail so I'll just wrap it up by saying that thin clients aren't necessarilt dumb and can be used in many more situations than first thought if not the home PC as yet.
-Grem
Thin clients have some great benefits for large organisations of many kinds( some of these comments may be specific to sunrays in particular or just generally of thin clients.) The folowing is a collection of points of interest on both the theory and practical application of thin clients.
1. Reduced Admin and maintanence. Remember if all of the processing is being done on the server then admin doesn't need to install anything on each desktop or fix any changes on a desktop that a user may make. Keep in mind this can be a much more signifigant problem when an organisation has users spread of multiple locations.
Upgrades can be done more efficiently and clashes of versions between users can be avoided.
The environment can be controlled much more tightly. In situations where factors such as the version of browers and plugins installed can effect performance of apps this controll of the users environment becomes very inportant.
2. Network traffic can be reduced by processing any data on the server where or near the data store. This can make a large performance difference for apps such as database style apps where the data need not be sent thru the network only the display data. (yes I have done some benchmarking on this did help a lot in some situations )
3.Shared workstations. If all the desktops are identical thin clients then they can simply can be used by several users and keep all the customisation of the current user. This becomes relevant in situations such as call centers with shifts operation or organisations like universities or libraries with public terminals.
This is where the sunray smart cards can be used to their best to swap users instantly by keeping the session live but not tieing up the physical terminal. Thus the number of terminal need only be the number of simultaneous users not the maximum number of users.
4. Another use particullarly relevant to me at the moment. The use of smart cards for hot desktoping enables users to literally pull out thier smart card and walk into a meeting with they session set up for a presentation, demo or even an error to show admin rather than calling admin to walk up and look at their screen.(the mountain to mohammad). The portability removes the need for everybody to have a laptop to do their presentations they mearly need to take their smartcard. Now compare the cost of a sunray to that of a laptop rather than a desktop and see if the saving is worthwhile now.
5. On a software level thin clients are much easier much quicker to develop. Numerous diferent thin clients can be developed to work with the same server and thus allow for a wider range of client interfaces to be designed giving the user a product more specific to their needs and thus easier to use and making the user more efficient, which is one of the goals of all this technology anyway. This model of thin client is increasingly usefully with the 'opening' of commercial software. This means where the vendor supports one of the communication standards like CORBA COM/DCOM and the like the client may be developed inhouse to connect to a commercial backend product even if the backend is a commercial closed source product.
A good example of this is a particular commercial database style product I know of. It is in part a database available on most platforms(not linux yet) and has made availabe thru CORBA/COM/DCOM an interface directly into some of the internal object used in the server. Available with the system are 2 different thin clients with no processing capabilities and will not do much at all without a connect to a server. This does mean that any third party could write a simillar thin client to work in exactly the same way.
The clients can be written in numerous different languages including java and thus can be run in a browser downloading the thin client java app from a web server as needed.
At this stage I feel I am begining to go off the point and getting into too much detail so I'll just wrap it up by saying that thin clients aren't necessarilt dumb and can be used in many more situations than first thought if not the home PC as yet.
-Grem
