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Thin Clients hit the commercial market with a bang toward the end of 1999, once the special Terminal Services Edition of NT 4.0 was out and right as Windows 2000 (with its intrinsic support for Terminal Services) was being introduced. As so often happens with a new technology, initial excitement and enthusiasm faded as the next advances appeared on the horizon, and many companies who jumped in early to offer Thin Client hardware found that sales did not match investor expectations as quickly as desired, and the field began to lean out.
The benefits of Terminal Server and Thin Clients were just too good to ignore, however, and continued marketing and advancements by companies such as Citrix and Microsoft resulted in building acceptance in the commercial market; to the point that today more companies than ever before have Thin Client hardware products. Operating systems used by these Thin Clients range from Microsoft Windows CE, CE.NET, or XP Embedded to Linux. In fact, while the sales of PCs have stagnated or even declined, Thin Clients have been enjoying double-digit growth.
In the commercial market, Wyse is by far the leader. They started offering Thin Clients as a natural extension of their computer terminal business, and early marketing and strong financial backing has kept them in front. Other makers are coming in, and the battle seems to be over who can produce the cheapest product. During recent testimony in the Microsoft Antitrust case, Andrew Gavil, professor of antitrust law at Howard University, noted that in the computer hardware market "the manufacturers themselves have been forced to sell toasters - they can't differentiate products. No matter what they do with the hardware, the hardware has become fairly generic."
During this period of Thin Client growth in the commercial arena, the industrial market waited - and like it usually does with any new product, began a cautious investigation. This investigation has led to gradual acceptance, with building momentum coming from successful installations and pilot programs.
Unproven technology has always been distrusted by the manufacturing sector, and the newness of the Thin Client "centralized computing" paradigm (at least, when applied to Windows programs) has certainly been one of the impediments to its acceptance. But the one fact that seems to be slowing the advancement of Thin Clients in factories more than any other is a lack of awareness. Attend any industrial trade show, stop a person at random and ask him if he is familiar with Thin Clients. While he has probably heard the term, most people will not be able to give you an answer that indicates he has an understanding of the technology.
Users who have investigated a switch to Thin Clients to save money on hardware have been disappointed. It turns out that an industrial Thin Client will cost more than a full office grade PC. Once the additional costs of extra licenses are added in, not to mention the cost of the servers, the overall system cost can be almost on par with a similar distributed industrial grade system. This has frustrated many who tried to use initial cost savings as a justification for setting up a Terminal Server and Thin Client network.
But as manufacturing personnel find out more about the long term cost savings and years of trouble free operation offered by switching to Thin Clients, many of the larger companies are moving away from the support problems inherent in a distributed PC architecture. Centralized application installation that is the basis of a Thin Client system greatly simplifies software updates and HMI screen modification. The guarantee that all operator stations are running the same software version is a comfort, and the fact that any failed station can be replaced as easily as a light bulb reduces down time. Thin Clients are much easier to secure and protect from viruses and hackers, and theft becomes a non-issue. They discover that Thin Clients are not so much about saving money on the client hardware as they are about saving money with the technology over the long term.
Where the initial costs of Thin Client hardware will save money over a distributed system is in an environment that demands rugged equipment or has specialized safety requirements, such as a Class I Div 2 installation. Separating the application processing, database access and non-volatile storage (running on the server) from the operator interface (running on the Thin Client) reduces the hardware needed at the end-user location, greatly simplifying the task of providing protected components in a dangerous area. Most Thin Clients have no moving parts such as fans or disk drives, require no forced air cooling, and many even run on low DC voltages, making it much less expensive to adapt to harsh environments.
Wireless advances provide another boost for Thin Clients. As industrial users become more accustomed to running signals via radio waves, Thin Client companies are starting to market the benefits of using a Thin Client to display the interface. Because only the changes on the virtual display being generated on the server are sent to the client, bandwidth requirements are much lower and the display can be updated at the same speed as could a screen running on the server. Concerns about security are also addressed because the broadcast data only includes VGA pixel information. And while there is not really a market for it yet, it seems logical that wireless handheld Thin Clients are on the horizon. The low power consumption of the thinner hardware is one reason, but just as important is the fact that no data is stored on the client. This means that if the battery dies, or the Thin Client is lost or damaged, the application and any associated data remains safe on the server.
Like the early stages of the commercial sector, some companies that have tried to bring industrial grade Thin Client hardware to market have been disappointed with initial sales. What they have started to discover is that the whole system is important to the industrial customer, not just the Thin Client hardware. A successful provider will, as always, have to give the customer a total solution, not just an isolated piece of computer hardware. As Jim Kenzig (CEO The Kenzig Group) puts it, with Thin Clients "it is the management piece that makes the client usable."
As more users discover the tremendous cost savings in switching to Thin Clients, hardware manufacturers will continue to respond with less expensive and more capable clients. Thanks to Microsoft, any Windows 2000 ready application is also ready to be run on a Thin Client system. But unless the user has a unifying management program to control, configure and monitor all running Thin Clients it will be difficult to keep them working smoothly. This type of high-level server software will not be provided by the Thin Client hardware manufacturers themselves. The approach that will result in the best system for the user is to find a company or two who make good quality industrial Thin Client hardware and then match that hardware with a software package that can keep the whole installation under control. The user will have a much easier and more successful Thin Client installation by utilizing a quality Thin Client management program to control the server-client relationships and provide for session backup in case of server problems. Additionally the Thin Client management software needs to be able to configure and store individual user settings and passwords, initial applications, touch screen configuration, industrial I/O, screen resolution, etc.,
In a September 2003 report entitled "Worldwide Enterprise Thin Client Forecast and Analysis, 2002-2007: The Rise of Thin Machines", IDC predicts that the worldwide enterprise thin client market will enjoy growth of around 22.8 percent over the next five years. They go on to predict that shipments of Thin Clients will reach 3.4 million units worldwide in 2007, up from just 1.5 million in 2003. They believe, however, that sales of Thin Clients will not really increase until manufacturers learn that customers need some extra level of functionality. Bob O'Donnell, director, Personal Technology for IDC, recognizes that it is "...only by focusing on the complete deployment process and helping customers through it can enterprise thin client vendors overcome the humps that are currently preventing them from reaching the types of goals of which they are eminently capable."
What do the next few years hold for Thin Clients in the industrial market? Companies involved in this area have seen gradual growth ever since the introduction of the technology, with no year being more profitable than 2003. Several factors are contributing to this increased growth:
First, those early adopters who tried Thin Clients are ready to move their limited pilot programs into full-scale deployments of hardware throughout their companies. Some of these large companies experimented with a small installation at a single location, but are now ready to standardize on Thin Clients and Terminal Server worldwide.
Secondly, Fortune 500 companies are wanting to extend the benefits they have seen with their commercial Thin Clients to the factory floor. They are therefore looking around for companies who can provide quality industrial Thin Client hardware and match it up with Thin Client management software designed for the manufacturing side of their business.
And lastly, there continues to be a growing awareness of the technology. As more Thin Clients are sold, companies will start to bring out advertising dollars, showing up as ads in the industrial publications and Thin Client events aimed at the industrial market.
Thin Clients have another thing going for them - they just make sense for manufacturing. Once that same person that we mentioned earlier at the industrial trade show (the one that we asked if he had heard about Thin Clients) has an understanding of the technology, odds are he will seriously consider it for his plant. Fact is, easily 98% of the people that take a moment to understand Terminal Server realize that Terminal Services and Thin Clients are a much better way to run their existing (and future) applications. When this happens, the days of the individual distributed PCs may be numbered.
For more information on ACP Industrial Thin Client computers, please visit our web site at http://www.thinmanager.com
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