Wyse CEO touts software initiative

The newly appointed CEO of thin-client vendor Wyse Technology has the task of transforming a small, modestly growing desktop hardware vendor into a major software player. And that's what John Kish says he'll do. Wyse is ranked No. 1 with 37% of the thin-client market, followed by Neoware Systems and HP, according to IDC. Thin clients essentially display applications that are run and managed on centralized servers, using software from Citrix or Microsoft. But few companies have given up PCs entirely for thin clients. So how does Kish plan to double Wyse revenue to about $350 million in two years and make it a $1 billion company in five? Network World Senior Editor John Cox spoke with him as he was packing for a three-week business trip to the Far East.

You were CEO-in-residence at Garnett & Helfrich Capital, a venture buyout firm that invested $35 million to take a controlling interest in Wyse and installed you as president and CEO. Why?

Wyse has lots of expertise in hardware devices at the edge of the network, which enable network-centric computing. The bet that G&F is making is that this model of network computing is becoming more important as we see a blurring between the enterprise and the consumer markets. We'll take a company that's been defined as a hardware company and begin emphasizing new software architectures first for the enterprise space, and then extend these into the consumer space.

And what do you mean by new software architectures?

The real value of thin-client computing, if you talk to large-company CIOs, is not in the [thin-client] device itself. Their question is, 'How can I build an architecture that lets me decide where [on my network] the processing occurs?' For example, a customer may choose to have everything run centrally for a highly secure application. But for another application, he may want to run part of the application on the edge device, but not allow any data to reside there.

Implementing this kind of flexible architecture requires the ability to dynamically shift application fragments back and forth between the server and the end device. This is technology that doesn't exist in a commercial form today, but Wyse will be bringing it to market in the next two quarters.

And this is real?

We already have some customers. There are a handful who are already in beta test on this technology.

Why is this flexibility such a big deal to these customers?

They can rationalize cost. You can start making decisions about the right kind of device for a particular kind of user. Traditionally, people tended to buy PCs in lieu of thin clients because they thought, 'You can do so much more with a PC instead of a thin client, so why not just get it, and then add Citrix if you wanted a network-centric model?'

So why not?

But they found that the cost of managing those PCs is excessive. The total cost of ownership is 40% to 60% higher for a PC vs. a thin client for any particular application type. Companies want to provide the most optimal solution for their end users. One solution may be having an active browser on a thin client. But for another, you might want to block the browser and access a centrally managed application. Companies want to be able to make that choice for each user or application type.