Fat or thin?

An estimated 400 million PCs are in line to be upgraded to Microsoft's new Vista operating system, at a potential cost of $3,000 to $5,000 per machine. Meanwhile, providing adequate network security seems to be getting more difficult, particularly for applications. Network access control is expensive

Those are among the assessments executives at Citrix provided at the company's recent customer conference, iForum-an almost evangelical gathering of those who consider today's "fat" PCs as both too much and too little. Too much in the way of what is needed in a PC for most employees, and too little in the way of providing security and cost efficiencies.

Their alternative: basic workstations-or thin-client PCs-that gain their capabilities from the network rather than from themselves. These solutions, currently representing less than 15% of the workstations in use, are touted by Citrix and its many partners as more easily and securely secured and far less expensive than their overstuffed brethren.

The goal of the "Citrix movement," CEO Mark Templeton says, is to connect users so that they can work from anywhere. The technology offers some compelling advantages that coincide with the issues most important to IT managers--security, lower costs, delivery optimization, low-cost conferencing and proactive monitoring and diagnostics.

For example, suggests Citrix Vice President David Jones, organizations planning to upgrade to Vista would save as much as half that estimated $3,000 to $5,000 per PC using the thin client approach. Only one Vista installation would be needed--in the data center--and subsequent patches or updates would have to be done only in the data center. "The technology works best for distributed, diverse companies," he explains, allowing employees in branch offices to access company applications from virtually any PC anywhere.

The Citrix movement has some challenges, however. It has grown slowly, almost organically, with little broad-based marketing to enterprise IT managers. Many of the companies riding Citrix's coattails with related products of their own are fairly small and unknown outside the relatively small thin client community. In addition, not every fat PC is a candidate to switch over to the thin client model.

This community may indeed have a better solution for those IT managers whose networks could take advantage of the pluses associated with the Citrix movement. Unfortunately, as even one Citrix executive expressed to me, the vendors in this space need to do a better job of educating potential buyers. Given how deeply the current PC culture is embedded, if that audience isn't educated, the opportunity to take advantage of what Jones calls a "tremendous sweet spot" concerning the refreshing of those 400 million PCs will be lost.

Ken Anderberg

kanderberg@comnews.com