Much Ado About IT

I went to a demo of Sun Microsystem's Sun Ray product last week.

Sun Rays are impressive little machines. They are one of the most idiot proof cubicle-land computer systems in existence. Simply slide a smart card in, it starts your session and a short wait later and you have stuff to click on. No local hardware or software config to worry about. Worry free.

The old school name for setups like this is the "dumb terminal". Marketing has spun this around, labelling the dumb terminal the "thin client" and the desktop the "fat client" or "rich client". It's rather obvious why people selling dumb terminals made this change - "thin" is sexier than "dumb" even though they often come packaged together in an interesting tradeoff known as the supermodel. Wikipedia is hot.

Thin clients are a product that I'd like to see my local bank using for reasons we will discuss. (with competent administrators, of course)

But lets size up our choices

In this corner...

The Thin Client

Advantages

• Less material
• Minimal administration
• Easily securable
• Simple to use
• Cheaper clients
• "Hot-desking" buzzword for saving sessions between machines (It doesnt matter which computer you use, the same screen you had before will come up)
• So simple a monkey could use it

Disadvantages

• Dependent on the network
• Never will be as fast as the typical PC
• Beefy servers required
• Lacking some configurability (arguably an advantage)
• Video playback is taboo

The Typical Corporate Windows Desktop

Advantages

• Fast
• Less reliant on the network
• Less reliant on servers

Disadvantages

• Easy to screw up
• Virus prone
• Costly client hardware
• Requires some user knowledge
• Hardware, software setup is hard to move

We can look at comparisons, numbers and factsheets all day, but what the hell do we want anyways?

Let's say we want the following:

Happy administrators using something incredibly easy to manage and maintain.
Happy employees with computers that work and have the software they need and/or enjoy using.

Happy customers that are mostly ignorant as to how your IT is managed because they never hear about any troubles with it.

Sexy, managable budgets and capped costs.

Of course, in technology, remember we may not maximize happiness as much as we can try to minimize frustration.

The Alternative

A viable alternative to both the traditional clunky desktop involves one simple step: buy your employees laptops. Let them have them.

Forget about the machines

Think of it as a benefit. Companies extend dental benefits to employees. They are also known to have performance bonuses, and miscellaneous goofy doodads to convince employees that theirs is the company to work for. Giving machines away will make your business special.

It's not like you're doing your employees a huge favour. The machines will depreciate in value like crazy, and your business would have probably ended up donating them to charity in a few years anyways (much like your employees probably would too)

Don't bother losing sleep wondering about how many computers you have or if anybody has stolen anything from the company. The company owns nothing beyond a few buildings and a few servers with some special bits stored on it.

If somebody walks in with a busted computer, tell them to restore from a supplied image or boot from LiveCD and work on important data from the network drive. Done. Employees that can't figure out how to effectively use their equipment are let go. It's not uncommon for a carpenter to own his own tools and take care of them on his own. Why would IT be different?

Throw out the smartcards

Something that doesn't quite make sense is the smartcard. Stealing an employee's wallet usually gives the crook in question complete access to a building through an ID card, but now they will have complete network access as well.

Passwords are still relevant. Passwords aren't about to go away anytime soon. Get real.

The beauty of network boot and LiveCDs.

If your business model has tasks (or employees) best suited for the advantages of the thin client, then simply use network boot or LiveCD/LiveDVD. The employee can't screw anything up as they can't modify the operating system whatsoever.

Better for the environment

One of the big so-called advantages touted by thin client manufacturers is that they consume less power and materials, and are therefore better for the environment. This is true. If everyone used a thin client, we'd have less e-waste and oodles of power to spare.

The thing is, in the typical corporate environment in a developed nation, an employee doesn't just use their work computer. They have AT LEAST one computer at home for entertainment and other purposes. The laptop plan would not only help curb this needless redundancy as well as create an unfashionable environment for huge clunky power-eating desktop PCs.

In this instance, the proliferation of relatively power thrifty laptops would be better for the environment than thin client based architectures.

Wonderful Wireless

All the thin client designs I've seen look like one of the later revisions of the iMac. None of these network machines that rely on the pervasive network actually account for the fact that you don't need to be plugged into the wall to be online.

Of course, the assumption that this is because wireless thin clients would be something of science fiction. The latency and network setup in the wireless world would be such a pain that deploying a group of thin client machines on anything other than a birdsnest of wiring would be totally insane. In comes the laptop.

So far, the laptop plan sounds pretty good. But since people barely read anything that isnt in simple lists, lets look at

Advantages

• The most portable solution
• More value for comparable cost
• Functionality akin to a thin client or desktop, as needed
• Employees will love it
• Employees might work from home if you're lucky
• "Hot-desking" buzzword for picking up your damn laptop and taking it to another desk!

Disadvantages

• Slightly slower than what is available for desktop computers.

And that's it.

It's Simple. Cheap. Fast. Fun.

Problem Solved.