Late last month, Sun Chairman Scott McNealy, and Mitel Chairman Terry Matthews delivered a Webcast on their thoughts on convergence in a thin-client environment. The discussion follows two March 2008 announcements by the companies unveiling the availability of the Sun Ray Unified IP Client from Mitel and availability of the Mitel Communications Suite on the Sun Fire X4150. McNealy and Matthews were both very bullish on their joint progress, and we had a chance to follow up with Matthews after the Webcast.

Both McNealy and Matthews extolled the virtues of convergence in a thin client environment, pointing out that enterprises can enjoy substantial savings on the cost of energy and maintenance associated with traditional desktop computer environments. The Sun Ray Thin Client and Mitel IP phone combined use only 9 watts of electricity compared to the 60 to 80 watt power typically needed to power a laptop or PC. Matthews noted that one Mitel customer was saving more than $100,000 a year in energy costs for every 1,000 employees because of the reduced power requirements, while McNealy estimated Sun’s annual savings were more than $25 million a year in energy and systems costs.

By using a “hot desk” rather than a traditional computer, McNealy also said that at Sun, replacing a hot desk terminal was assigned to a facilities technician rather than an IT staff member (because of the straightforward installation) so maintenance costs are also reduced. And, by using a combination of hot desks and allowing Sun employees to telework where possible, McNealy added that his company is saving an estimated $70 million in reduced facilities costs since many employees can work from home.

While a thin client and the Sun Ray are not new concepts, what does make this convergence solution attractive is that Mitel has taken the ultra thin client Sun Ray technology and created a slim module that snaps securely onto Mitel IP phones to provide a unified communications desktop. This allows users to securely “hot desk” into both the Mitel IP phones and the Sun Ray thin client terminals using a personal, authenticated Java Card. Mitel’s Communications Director call control software resides on Sun servers to consolidate applications including the features supported by the Mitel 3300 ICP.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.