HP is designing a thin-client-like blade PC that sources say will centralize the task of managing individual desktops by moving their intelligence to data centers, where access and security can be controlled more easily.
HP is designing a thin-client-like blade PC that sources say will centralize the task of managing individual desktops by moving their intelligence to data centers, where access and security can be controlled more easily.
With blade PCs, employees have a monitor, keyboard and mouse on their desks, along with a client appliance linked to centrally located blade servers packed into a data center chassis. Spare blades could be configured to provide hot backup in case of a failure. The idea is that IT more easily could control access to resources in centrally located racks of servers than in widely dispersed PCs.
“Today’s economic climate and the way customers are thinking about better management, better utilization of resources, has also become a desktop issue for some customers,” says Hugh Jenkins, vice president of marketing for the Industry Standard Server group at HP.
HP said it was working on a blade client but declined to give other details. The company has a slew of PC-related announcements slated for this week, “but they’re not blade-related in any form or fashion,” a spokeswoman says. HP also would not disclose technical details about what it is working on, except to say that it is “engaging with select customers” to address issues such as distance limitations between desktop and servers that might be curtailing widespread adoption of similar products from other vendors.
Start-up ClearCube, for example, can send signals over Category 5 Ethernet from the blade to its C/Port client device up to 660 feet away. Raj Shah, chief marketing officer at ClearCube, says the company is working on fiber technology that will extend that distance by at least 3,200 feet.
Analysts say HP likely is using some type of hybrid thin-client approach that would lift distance limitations but still give users access to a dedicated blade. In true thin-client systems, users share system resources.
“The advantage of [the hybrid thin-client] approach is that you can switch it, which means you can pump [the bits] across a network. As long as you’ve got a network, you can install this solution. It doesn’t really matter where the blades are or where the desktop is. It will go over the Ethernet,” says Rob Enderle, research fellow at Forrester Research.
With the other products, “there has to be a direct cable connection from the blade to the desktop. You can’t switch it, because basically the wire has got to be continuous because it just extends the ports,” he says.
Keyboard, video, mouse switch maker Avocent Technologies introduced its digital desktop last summer after acquiring digital extension technology from 2C Computing. Its product, which places a Cstation client device on a user’s desktop, can send PCI bus signals from a remote PC up to about 2,600 feet away over multimode fiber and up to about 660 feet away over copper lines.
Avocent and ClearCube executives say they have talked with systems vendors such as Dell, HP and IBM about using their technology to create blade PCs.
HP would be the first Tier 1 systems vendor to introduce a blade PC, which might help give the market a kick, analysts say. IBM, on the other hand, says it has no plans to introduce blade architecture into its PC products. “Our customers aren’t calling for it,” an IBM spokesman says.
Not that interest in the devices isn’t out there.
“The concept of PC blades is gaining more currency because of the availability and security aspects of it post-9/11,” says Roger Kay, director of client computing at IDC. “There are some cost reasons that favor it, as well, particularly support costs, because the real smarts of your system are sitting in one place, which happens to be where your IT people are.”
The idea is attractive to the financial industry and educational institutions, where multiple desktops might be packed into small areas, analysts say. Call centers and other applications that require high availability also could benefit from the blade architecture, and factories could use it to get critical computer systems out of dirty work environments.
ClearCube, which has had a blade PC product for more than four years, says it is seeing increasing interest and has more than 400 customers, including Morgan Stanley and British Petroleum. The ability to centrally locate PCs – eliminating clutter on desktops, streamlining IT management and protecting those assets from theft or damage – is gaining attention.
Wayne Rhinehart, project manager at International Paper in Memphis, Tenn., uses Avocent technology to centrally locate Dell servers for his test lab.
“Our LAN group can manage the servers from a central location vs. trying to get under everybody’s desk,” he says. “It reduces the time that the guys are trying to figure out locations of machines. Probably just the time-savings for technicians is where we get the most bang for our buck.”
