Wyse sets fresh course for thin clients

Wyse Technology last week announced new versions of its thin-client operating system and device-management software, plus an application that the company says can stream software components to any thin client on demand.

The products signal a shift by the company away from its traditional focus as a hardware vendor supplying companies with desktop terminals that display server-based applications. Wyse plans to be more of a software supplier for those terminals and other thin-client devices, the company says. Its goal is to create applications that can set up and manage a thin-client device, based on the user and its use.

But other companies have introduced similar capabilities. One is archrival Neoware Systems, which bought a French software vendor in April and recently introduced its Image Manager. Ardence also streams both operating system and application components to clients. Others, such as SoftonNet, Softricity and Stream Theory, focus on streaming just the application.

Wyse's goal is to build on the current deployment of thin clients in the enterprise. Today, companies typically deploy thin clients to minimize the costs, the administrative headaches and the risks of virus attacks inherent in running and maintaining full-fledged Windows PCs.

In the future, companies will benefit from stateless thin clients that eliminate hard disks and flash memory, can be configured by the network when they come online, can be fed just those software components needed at any given time and are immune to viruses, says John Kish, CEO at Wyse.

Wyse has rewritten its ThinOS, formerly called Blazer, so that it can be easily ported to a variety of chip architectures.

"We think the thin-client concept will move fast into consumer markets," Kish says. "Those markets have a range of alternative chipsets, for example, low-power chipsets found in mobile phones. We want our operating system to be transparent to these chip architectures." He says Wyse is in talks with various chipmakers but declined to say which ones.

The most visible part of the company's scheme is the new Wyse Streaming Manager, which runs on a server but acts as if it were the local hard disk for networked client devices. When a thin client is powered on, it activates a Pre-Execution Environment boot request, which is sent to the Streaming Manager.

The Wyse software sends a network boot program, authenticates the device and then sends to it those parts of the operating system needed to run the requested applications.

The software runs in RAM on the device. Users log on and are authenticated as they are today, and see no difference in application performance, says Jeff McNaught, Wyse's vice president of corporate strategy.