Schools have high hopes for thin-client service

By John Cox
Network World, 7/6/98

Lexington, N.C. - Like most organizations, Lexington City Schools in North Carolina has to buy, install and maintain application software on aging computers. That will soon change.

Using a new model, the school system will subscribe to a set of office and education applications running on a remote server cluster. The cluster runs Microsoft Corp. Windows NT Server 4.0 Terminal Server Edition (TSE), plus a companion product called MetaFrame from Microsoft development partner Citrix Systems, Inc. Students, teachers and administrators are connected via a high-speed TCP/IP link over a frame relay network, and the applications appear to be running locally.

The arrangement, which appears to be the first of its kind in the U.S., is intended to let students use the latest software programs, create a more reliable computing system and extend the life of aging PCs.

The software subscription service, created by a start-up called Learningstation.com (LSC), of Charlotte, N.C., may be a forerunner of a new computing model for nonprofit organizations and corporations. LSC plans to introduce a similar concept, with a different set of hosted applications, for manufacturing companies later this month and packages for still other vertical markets in the future.

The school system's 1,800 computers are a blend of Macintoshes and old Intel 386- and 486-based PCs running Windows 3.1.

There are 29 LANs, two WANs and, incredibly, just two support staffers, one of whom is Larry Burwell, the director of computer technology services.

Burwell, like many PC administrators, has been struggling with almost insurmountable problems. "We wanted something on the desktop that would be low maintenance - no hard drive and no floppy drive," he said. "School kids stick everything they can into a floppy drive."

The second problem is students and teachers loading software or making changes to the existing software, creating an endless array of software bugs, glitches, freezes and crashes.

Lastly, with Internet access being offered, Burwell is concerned about access reliability and performance, and about students getting onto inappropriate sites.

He saw a demonstration of LSC's new software leasing service and was impressed by the performance as well as the fact that with relatively little effort, every new or existing client computer, including Windows 3.1 and Macintosh PCs, would be able to access the most up- to-date 32-bit applications.