You knew this was going to happen, right? After the second, third or fourth time a laptop with private data on it went missing, you knew that thin clients or dumb terminals were going to make a comeback. And now that the Wall Street Journal has a free article about them, you can be sure the idea isn’t going away any time soon.
'Dumb Terminals' Can Be a Smart Move cites a few companies that have installed thin clients and decreased costs and increased security – an insurance company, a law firm and a county in Pennsylvania:
Jeffery Shiflett, assistant director of information technology for the County of York, Pa., deployed such terminals throughout the county starting in 2002. What started as a setup of 45 terminals in a small county-run nursing home four years ago has expanded to 925 terminals.
Mr. Shiflett says using the terminals has helped the county stay current with regulations such as the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act enacted in 1996, which requires the medical industry to do a better job of securing private medical information. "The need to secure the desktop and provide that sort of compliance...was a key factor that moved us toward implementation of thin clients and a separation from the traditional PC," Mr. Shiflett says.
The article also cites IDC research that says that in 2006 worldwide shipments of thin-client units rose 20.8 percent from the previous year and that the category is expected to increase 21.5 percent annually through 2010.
It’s still a small piece of the pie, but when it’s time for your office to replace desktops computers and laptops, do you think thin clients will be considered?
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