Customer experiences thin clients

One of the things I enjoy doing is talking with IT about the problems they are trying to solve with certain vendors, and where they want to be within the next two years. It provides nice balance to the messages the vendor is giving throughout a briefing. The conversation is on background only, which means that the conversation is often open and lively. One vendor customer check I did last week was on a manufacturer of advanced thin client devices. I seldom repeat these conversations, especially when the vendor is not even a client of mine. However, the customer had a few points on thin clients that I thought were worth sharing:

• The customer has the server-based computing religion. Virtualization in the data center supports a distributed user community. The primary application requirements were Citrix and VoIP. The ability to dynamically add digital protocol services in the future within the centralized server model. The biggest security benefits are ease of configuration management as compared to desktops, and the lack of persistent storage that must be protected. It is much easier to keep consistently compliant endpoints in the workforce when they are served from the central servers.
• Digital telephony support was a major factor for the customer. VoIP support, routed through telephony servers in the corporate data center, was essential in addition to the standard ICA and RDP protocols. They plug a headset into the USB port of the thin client and off they go. The company saves the expense of purchasing and maintaining separate VoIP phones and controls all configurations automatically from centralized servers.
• The customer expects the thin clients to have a life span of 10 yrs. Compare that to refresh cycles for desktops and laptops. He told me he got 11 years out of his just-replaced Dell kit. I do not know if that's normal, but I do admit there are no moving parts (disks, fans) that might break. This has to save considerable costs not only in products, but in reduced help desk calls which frees people up for other security tasks.

It turns out that the securing sensitive data residing on shared devices (e.g. point of sale systems, hospital kiosks, bank teller stations) was not a factor in the decision making process for this customer. Control of the endpoint configuration for converged processing of data and voice, however was huge. And I still think the long life-cycle is incredible.