Wyse pushes thin clients with new software, partners

IDG News Service - Wyse Technology Inc. is set to unveil a wide-ranging set of products and partnerships as it tries to jump-start the concept of server-based computing.
Wyse CEO John Kish will be in New York today, where he is expected to be joined by Sun Microsystems Inc. President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz, Computer Associates International Inc. President and CEO John Swainson and others to introduce a thin-client computing application and reseller agreements promoting Wyse's thin-client strategy.
The company's new Streaming Manager software can be deployed on servers with the Windows Server 2003 operating system to deliver unique sets of applications that run on Windows client operating systems to users across a company's network.

IT departments have heard many sales pitches for thin-client computing. The concept involves removing most of the intelligence from a desktop computer, leaving the local user with a relatively dumb terminal and display to access applications and data stored on a central server. This allows IT managers to take closer control of their client systems, which they like, but has historically delivered performance well below that of traditional PCs, which users don't like.

As a result, most companies have stuck with the devil they know, and thin clients make up only about 5% of the desktop computer market, according to Wyse. The difference this time around, according to Kish, is that network performance and software capabilities have dramatically improved and IT managers are increasingly worried about managing security problems, he said in an interview prior to the event.

The San Jose-based company has moved away from building devices to focus on developing software for running thin-client operations, Kish said in an interview earlier this year. Thin-client hardware has become a very low-margin business, making it more attractive to design and develop software that runs those devices, he said.

Wyse is expected to introduce a product, Wyse Streaming Manager, that will allow IT managers to deploy applications and the Windows operating system to terminals on their networks as each user logs on to the network, so that no client software resides on the individual terminals, Kish said.

For example, one user's job might require a special set of engineering applications and an interface to a database. Streaming Manager can deploy that software over a company's network to that specific user when he logs on to any terminal connected to the network.

Next door, another user might need only basic office productivity applications. IT managers can use Streaming Manager to send those applications to the user without having to

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