Wyse takes aim at die-hard PC users

Wyse Technology has several initiatives under way as part of a new effort to penetrate enterprises that have so far rejected thin clients.

As well as more capable hardware, Wyse has unveiled TCX Multimedia, which enables thin clients to better deliver multimedia content; and an architecture it calls Zero Client computing, whereby the devices are completely stateless and boot from a server every time they are switched on.

Wyse’s Zero Client strategy sees it ship thin clients with no Flash memory and hence no locally stored operating system. Instead, the device fetches this from a provisioning server every time it is switched on. There are two reasons for this: to give firms greater flexibility in the platforms they wish to use; and to cut management overheads, since there is nothing on the device that might need updating anymore.

“With Zero Client, you no longer have to manage the devices, but an OS image on the server instead,” said Jeff McNaught, chief marketing officer at Wyse. The image sent to the device can vary depending on the user profile, he added, so that one user might get a different operating system and application set to the next user that logs in from the same terminal.

Zero Client also gives firms the ability to use thin clients without committing to a server-based strategy, since the provisioning server can deploy a full-blown version of Windows as easily as a thin client version. The Wyse device can thus operate as a terminal or as a diskless PC, depending on whether it boots into XP Embedded (XPe) or XP Professional.

“You can move all your users to server-based computing, or you can go to a mid-way step and have the OS and apps run locally, but make all the storage centralised. Firms can really see the benefit of this,” said McNaught.

Currently, Zero Client only supports XP Pro, Windows 2000 or XPe, but Wyse plans to extend this to further platforms, including its own Thin OS. Ultimately, the IT department will be able to decide whether applications execute locally or are delivered through Citrix or Terminal services, according to McNaught.

The development of TCX Multimedia is an attempt to address customer concerns about the multimedia performance of thin clients. The technology enables PC quality audio and video playback under an RDP or ICA session, using the terminal itself to decode multimedia content.

Meanwhile, Wyse devices can now be managed directly through Microsoft’s SMS or Altiris Deployment Server, addressing claims from PC-only sites that the need for a separate management console was a disincentive to use thin clients.

On the same theme, Wyse’s own Device Manager tool now plugs into the Citrix Management Console, CA Unicenter and IBM Tivoli tools, enabling users of these suites to see and manage Wyse devices as well.