Neoware launches streaming image manager

BANGALORE: Neoware Systems, Inc., in association with Parrus IT Solutions Pvt Ltd, has announced the launch of its Software Streaming Image Manager and latest thin client offerings, the Neoware C50 and the Neoware E370, in India.

Thin clients as a computing architecture held tremendous relevance for India, said Sowinder Singh, director, Parrus IT Solutions. “Michael Kantrowitz has been an evangelist for server-based computing while overseeing Neoware's growth to 25 percent of the global market share,” he said, introducing Neoware's chairman and CEO.

Neoware, which marked its entry into India in May 2005, forayed into other Asian markets like Singapore and China only recently. A 10-fold growth for the company in five years was indicative of the potential of the thin client market, said Kantrowitz. IDC had reported a 47 percent third quarter growth in 2005 for thin clients in Asia, he added.

Neoware liked to view thin clients as a product for corporate and government use, he observed, adding that specific software customization was on offer in India. Medium and large-sized organizations (with at least 100 employees) fitted the bill, he said.

Singh alluded to leakage of confidential information from call centers to drive home the point about customer data security in ITeS in India. Banking, IT, Insurance and the Indian Railways, he said, were huge markets waiting to be explored.

The Neoware Image Manager combined with the Neoware C50 introduced specially for India could even function sans a server, said Kantrowitz, explaining the security and cost benefits. The virtualization of a single copy of an operating system from the server to any number of thin clients was another draw, he said.

Tally, ICICI OneSource, Wipro e-Peripherals among others were onto the thin client bandwagon, said Singh. Listing international clients for Neoware's thin clients, Kantrowitz made special mention of Air Canada, Air France and France Telecom.

Airlines were well served in remote locations where they had no computer people, said Kantrowitz. Education was another area where thin clients stood to gain, said Singh, naming Don Bosco Institute of Technology, PES, St. Aloysius and Bangalore University as institutions that had gone for thin clients.

The advantage of having to back up just servers as against every desktop and the prospect of internet connectivity for a lot more people was also driving demand for thin clients, remarked Kantrowitz. Neoware was committed to India as a marketplace and in a position to support the largest thin client deployment, he added.

Backing the solidity of the thin client proposition in the country, he said that high speed network and such other infrastructure were in place, unlike when the thin client concept first took flight. Every Microsoft operating system sold to businesses had come to support thin clients, he said.

“Today, we have thin clients below Rs 10,000 for the Indian market,” he said. The 'primary driver' for the thin client market, however, remained the security aspect, besides, the reduced total cost of ownership was another incentive, he added.