Wyse OS virtualized 5 June, 2008 By Paul Weinberg

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But the big winner may be Citrix, which has always had a special relationship with Wyse, stated Andi Mann, research director at Enterprise Management Associates.

"This announcement is a great show of support not just for VMware and Microsoft, but especially for the newest Citrix release of XenDesktop. It poses a major challenge to VMware VDI and this sort of OEM support will be critical to XenDesktop's potential success in that race."

The other matter is that thin clients are being taken seriously as the desktop of choice for a virtual desktop environment, asserted Mann. He estimated that desktop virtualization is experiencing growth rates well above 20 percent.

"One large investment bank I spoke to planned a multi-million ROI based solely on extending their hardware refresh by two years, using desktop virtualization."

Mann noted that thin clients, which are priced under $200, are cheaper than full fledged PCs for the desktop and are also easier to manage from the central server.

"There is almost zero management needed to be done. In desktop virtualization with a PC, there is still some management of that PC to do. With the thin client, you plug it in and you go."

In addition, Mann indicated, full featured PCs need to be refreshed every three years while thin clients can last from four to six years.

One promising item on the Wyse thin client OS is enhanced multimedia capability, which would resolve a lingering problem in thin clients.

"Multimedia and other high bandwidth apps have been troublesome in thin client environments because of the lag-time that typically affects applications and commands delivered over company networks," stated Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

He noted that customers have addressed this issue by placing data centers close to the thin clients they service. Also, he continued, vendors such as Hewlett Packard from a software perspective and IBM in the form of hardware offer acceleration technologies to mitigate the network latency with thin clients.

For Bob O'Donnell at IDC, it is not enough for Wyse to provide multi-media extensions since reciprocal developments have to also occur on servers.

"[Wyse] is working with Citrix and other companies to embed multimedia extensions into those server platforms, to improve it. So, it is not really up to Wyse but they have been at the forefront of ramping technologies that will help make it better. But it is not something they can just automatically and magically do on the client side. A lot of it has to be done on the server," stated O'Donnell, program vice president, clients and displays at IDC.

Wyse thin clients show up in all kinds of organizations and companies particularly in call centers, health care institutions, retailers, financial services and defense.

Nevertheless, Wyse effectively was pushed out of its lengthy No. 1 market position in thin clients last year when Hewlett Packard purchased Neoware, a provider of thin client software and devices, O'Donnell observed.

The upgrading of Wyse's thin client OS is very timely, added King. "By equally supporting both VMware and Citrix's individual solutions, Wyse will be able to effectively present itself as an expert in and vendor of desktop alternatives of every kind."