The Case for Thin Clients, Part I

The Top five reasons why more and more users are choosing Thin Clients.

ACP recently had a survey mailed to 1,000 potential Thin Client customers, asking them a number of questions about Thin Clients.  One of the questions asked the respondents to rate the importance of several Thin Client benefits.  Here are the results, along with the percentage of people that voted for each:

1. Save Money - 30%

Almost 1 out of 3 people selected this as the most important Thin Client benefit.  It is not surprising that as factories try to increase their efficiency (do more with less) Thin Client technology is moving to the forefront.  The purchase of an industrial PC will still cost thousands of dollars - industrial Thin Clients can be had for as little as $625.  Add a 12.1" LCD Touchscreen and the price is still around $2,000.  But initial cost savings are really just the tip of the iceberg.

The Gartner Group (Gartner Group TCO study) reaches the conclusion that "it costs about $10,000 per user per year to own and operate a personal productivity PC."   This is because as system complexity increases so do maintenance costs.  A Thin Client is about as simple as you can get - all software is installed and maintained on central servers, located in a secure location.  Thin Clients also have no moving parts (disk drives, fans, etc.) that can fail, nor do they have software that must be updated.  And as this study focused on standard commercial applications, it is easy to see that the cost of operating a PC in a factory is even higher. For any company looking to cut operating costs, the long term cost savings provided by thin clients cannot be ignored.

2. Reduce Downtime - 20%

People are moving to Thin Clients because they like the instant replacement of damaged equipment.  Anything that puts a PC out often brings the line down.  Replacing a PC is often a very time consuming task that involves location and installation of multiple programs and drivers.  While good backups certainly help, there is still no way christening a new PC will take less time then powering up a Thin Client - especially if the IT department has already gone home.

When a new Thin Client powers on, it immediately has access to all of the applications and data that were available to the previous client.  In fact, the application that was running when the previous equipment was damaged is still active, and once the new Thin Client is up and going (under 1 minute, including switching cables) the operator is right back where he was.

3. Data and System Security - 18%

It is very difficult to make a system composed of distributed PCs secure.  Not only can users frequently break into the systems, they can also take data or add viruses via a floppy disk drive.  Thin Clients, on the other hand, have no disk drives, and are very difficult to use to gain access to the network.  Physical theft of the machines is also not an issue.  Because a Thin Client is useless without a properly configured server, operators will not be taking them for personal use.

If a Thin Client is operated over a modem using the Internet to connect to a server, the communications protocol provides an additional measure of security.  A user at a distant site can view spreadsheets, query databases and display factory screens without any fear that the data can be intercepted.  Thin Clients do not actually transmit the data, even when performing large SQL queries.  Instead only the compressed representations of the changes to the client's screen are sent to the decoding engine on the Thin Client.

4. Support current applications - 12%

Many new platforms require a substantial investment in new software.  Thin Clients allow users to take their standard Windows based software and run it on a platform that behaves just like the PCs that they are using right now.  Windows 2000 Server is becoming a very accepted platform by all of the industrial software companies, and that is the same version of Windows that is at the heart of any Thin Client system.

Why try and convert all of your applications (redrawing and re-scripting almost every user display) to allow them to run in a Web Browser?  And even if you do the conversion, and keep up with two versions of every screen, they still must be displayed on a PC that has to be supported.

5. Single installation and maintenance of application software - 8%

This is always one of the first points that we make with customers.  Install and maintain your applications one time (on the Windows Server) and then plug in as many Thin Clients as you want.  Each client starts a session on the server and is able to run the programs just as if they were being run on the server's console.  Since programs are not installed all over the plant, they do not have to be kept current.  Operators can't modify them or add foreign applications to the local PC.  IT personnel don't have to update each PC every time that Microsoft or the vendor updates their software.  Backups are easier.

The true cost savings realized as a result of switching to Thin Clients come directly from the centralized support model inherent in the Thin Client design.

Other - 12%

Just to add up to 100% - a combination of other factors was listed as well, but the most common results are listed above.

Make sure to look for the next articles in this series.  Here are the planned follow-ups:

Part II - Frequently asked questions about Thin Clients and existing applications

Part III - Making the leap from PCs to Thin Clients

Part IV - PCs and Thin Clients - A feature-by-feature comparison

For more information on ACP Industrial Thin Client computers, please visit our web site at http://www.thinmanager.com

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