Linux Thin Clients: Lifting Wyse to Biggest Month Ever?
Even as the economy went into a nosedive, Wyse Technology Inc.’s thin client sales continued to climb higher. In fact, Wyse — which increasingly promotes Linux-based solutions through channel partners — says the company generated record revenue in October. How is that possible? Here’s the scoop.
First, some background: Since Wyse is privately held, it’s difficult to estimate just how well the company is performing. But according to Chief Marketing Officer Jeff McNaught, Wyse generated record sales in October.
In recent months, Wyse has been promoting thin desktop and mobile client devices running a “Wyse Enhanced” version of Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise. Early demand for those systems appears strong.
Wyse and Novell both point to an IDC report, predicting that the:
“… Linux thin client market will grow from nearly 1 million units in 2008 to 1.8 million units in 2011. Linux will reach a 30.5 percent share of all operating system shipments on thin client devices by 2011.”
Windows Slims Down, Too
Sounds impressive. But it’s important to note that Wyse also supports Windows in a big way on thin clients.
Eager adopters include Hilton Hotels, which leverages Wyse thin clients running Windows XP Embedded for call center applications. Hilton had nearly 700 Wyse V90 and V90LE thin clients in 2007, and that number was expected to double through the course of 2008.
Ultimately, Wyse is winning because the company supports customer choice (Windows or Linux). Plus, the thin client model allows businesses to re-centralize desktop management, and eliminates many of the hidden break-fix costs associated with PCs.
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Thin clients are doing a stealth attack on markets. Although the volume is low, the long lifetime of thin clients, 2 to 3 times that of a PC, means years of rapid growth has claimed a few percent of seats. Because about 80% of PCs are doing non-cpu-intensive tasks,a large shift could come quickly. Education is a big market that could use thin clients widely. Call centres are another.I expect the rapid growth to accelerate as IT departments seek to get off the Wintel treadmill and to go to more efficient operations. The new quad-core processors are ideal for terminal servers but make little sense for 80% of desktops.
I ordered a bunch of thin clients yesterday. For me, even the reduced cost of freight on the little guys is sufficient justification to use them because air freight is the only route here. On top of that, I get easy management and no malware. Priceless.
Robert: Did you go with Windows Embedded or Linux, and why? The VAR Guy is curious (as usual…)
Don’t know about the thin clients, but if they’re anything like the Dell Inspiron 530n preloaded with Ubuntu GNU/Linux, they must be awesome!!
Checkout this article:
Dell Inspiron 530n, NVIDIA 9400GT, Ubuntu preloaded – one word Awesome!
http://healthysystem.blogspot.com/2008/11/dell-inspiron-530n-nvidia-9400gt-ubuntu.html
We recently transitioned our Insurance company to a Terminal Server based delivery solution from the typical fat client running on every PC. We purchased the simple Wyse S30 Windows CE based model as a trial for one of the branch offices. Other than a few quirks that the Wyse tech support helped us with it has been a great success.
Price was the deciding factor, and as the Windows CE model was the cheapest for our simple needs (auto launch an RDP connection with USB pass through support) that’s what we went with. I’d have no concerns running a Linux based version either, but having Windows (even Windows CE) gave a bit of comfort to the decision makers for this trial. We will be moving forward with a thin client solution company wide, and based on the good support we’ve received with our small trial they will likely be Wyse terminals.
I try to use GNU/Linux for everything because I can understand it and make it work. I think I get a better deal by not paying any licence fee to M$.
The devices I ordered are very flexible. They come with GNU/Linux embedded but can do RDP/XDMCP/NX etc. as well as PXE. Most schools have never seen equipment like this. The ones who have seen it love it. It just works, right out of the box, and keeps on working.
Robert, Nickoljt: Thanks for weighing in. You’ve confirmed that customer choice (Windows and Linux support) will help the thin client market to thrive.
Please keep The VAR Guy posted as you roll out additional Wyse solutions — or alternatives. Always good to read about real-world deployments, written by the people who managed the deployments.
We’ve been using mostly Neoware thin clients for four years now. They PXE boot via LTSP and work great! This Linux thin client setup is THE WAY to go. Everyone gets a Linux desktop which provides Email, browser. 5250 (AS400) emulation and all the other open source good stuff. Like rdesktop, so we can connect to our Win2003 server for the (few) windows apps we still need, or Eclipse for app development. With LTSP and a Linux desktop I can be logged in simultaneously to 8 servers each of which gives me 18 or more workspaces. Windows can’t touch that at any cost.
When we upgrade any one of our three LTSP servers we just config the other two to pick up the users and do the upgrade. When its ready, we just reboot the neowares and they will download the new OS as they boot. 30 workstations upgraded with just a reboot. THAT is the beauty of thin clients.
Behind the three LTSP servers (workstation grade PCs) is our REAL server,NAS-1 , a Linux server which exports home, data and application directories to the LTSP servers. Behind it is NAS-2 (also Linux) with cron jobs that automatically backup NAS-1 and ssh rsync it to another NAS offsite.
Linux + thin clients are a killer one,two punch that will allow you the best of all worlds. Cheap hardware, reliable, CENTRALLY MANAGED operating system and applications and ZERO, spelled Z-E-R-O $MS licensing costs and headaches.
Thin clients ? Warm. Linux thin clients ? Hot Hot Hot.
Al
Data Processing Adm
Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative Inc
West PLains Missouri 65775
I think thin clients are doing well because everything is networked now and few office workers actually need a whole PC on the desks and they just make everything so much more manageable.
Aikiwolfie: You’re onto something. At first, The VAR Guy was skeptical of thin mobile notebooks that required network connections to do anything useful.
When The VAR Guy asked Wyse about that limiting factor, Wyse said “when was the last time you used a full-functioned notebook without a WiFi or Ethernet connection?”
They had a point: The VAR Guy has panic attacks when his full-function notebook lacks a network connection. So it’s easy to see why businesses will accept thin notebooks that “require” such connections to really operate.
Our school district is up to nearly 2000 HP/Linux thin clients supported by 30 or so terminal servers across 17 schools. We deploy thin clients in every classroom, every lab, every office. There is no question in our minds that this has been the most cost effective, secure, and manageable solution for our permanently underfunded, understaffed urban school district.
Mike St. Jean: Happy Thanksgiving and please let us know if/when you do additional deployments. Our readers value your perspective, as does The VAR Guy.
Thin clients are great for business. Talk about bullet proof.
These guys have been doing stuff in schools for some time, though they are using Sun Ray amp; Solaris rather than Wyse amp; Linux. Main downside is the relatively poor AV performance, but you can also bolt on SGD for access via any browser on any platform.
http://www.cutterproject.co.uk
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