Slim-fit technology

INDIA: Today when the boss says, Lets meet tomorrow morning at nine sharp! There's a big difference from the way we understood him, say, about a decade ago. For one, he would not be sitting across a table addressing a team nor would he be shooting a notice for the soft board. Nine and half out of ten times, he would be at his computer, most likely, out of what wed call office. Secondly, he would be talking to people spread across the city, country, even the continent maybe.

What has happened is as simple as it is fantastic. Our twentieth century technology brings the world to our doorstep. In fact Bill Gates in his book The Road Ahead, talked about such an eventuality when he said that the information highway is an inadequate metaphor, since it suggests landscape and geography, a distance between points, and embodies the implication that you have to travel to get from one place to another. He corrects this metaphor saying, and I quote, "One of the most remarkable aspects of this new communications technology is that it will eliminate distance. It wont matter if someone you're contacting is in the next room or the next continent because the highly mediated network will be unconstrained by miles and kilometers."

The New Way of Life

Welcome to a burgeoning reality called virtual offices and remote computing.

It's no big surprise why this is fast becoming a way of life. Real estate costs are spiraling sky-high and there is a dearth of physical space for new offices. Again, in today's corporate environments, computers are essential everyday business tools and the IT departments own the responsibility of managing and maintaining them. This being the case, the biggest challenges the departments face are space limitations, data security and power consumption.

What adds further complexity to IT management systems are the emerging trends of using outsourced workers and contract staff, turning Saturdays into half working days and increasing number of round-the-clock shifts. On the other hand, it is also true that more and more people in search of quality life and quality time are fast adopting the concept of working from home. In all, the traditional definition of an office is fast mutating. A world of anywhere access across time and space is a very desirable goal!

However, ultimately the stability of such a virtual world depends on security and the assurance to create and share information without the fear of it being compromised, stolen, or exploited. Enter the RCS (Remote Client Solutions) ecosystem that through centralization of client computing technology helps to centrally control the entire computing infrastructure from a single point behind closed doors and ensures increased security to assets, compliance to security regulations and protection of company data and IP. Not only that, business continuity is seamless irrespective of workforce getting reassigned or relocated to different functions or different locations. Since each client is centralized, people can share equipment, use any of the client access devices from any part of the organization and access their own data from anywhere. Centralized data also means a disaster recovery back-up and lower cost of hardware, software and personnel maintenance.

In such architecture, a PC blade, or a computer that is entirely contained in a thin, modular circuit card and placed in a centralized, secure location such as a server rack plays an important role. Though more expensive to deploy than the conventional arrangement, it offers a number of advantages over the traditional approach, including space savings and lower administrative, operational and maintenance resource demands.

Thin on Mobil

But technology has another favorite too, the Mobile Thin Client. Managed almost entirely at the server, the hardware has fewer points of failure and the client is simple, providing protection from malware. A thin client can be designed so that no application data ever resides on the client (just whatever is displayed), centralizing malware protection and reducing the risks of physical data theft. It consumes much less energy and in some cases, does not even require air-conditioning to function. Moreover, since terminal servers typically reside on the same high-speed network backbone as file servers, most network traffic is confined to the server room. In a mobile thin client environment, only mouse movements, keystrokes and screen updates are transmitted from and to the end-user.

Thin is increasing becoming the lifeline for many. In fact, for Keith Courier, the owner of Mosaic, an Omaha nonprofit venture that manages care for the functionally disabled and housing for independent elders, it is literally one. Going Thin has helped him to handle and keep safe patient records that were initially scattered across 1,500 Windows PCs in 16 states! Again, without the Thin, managing 400 different versions of software update application in 400 locations would be crazy, a maintenance nightmare for companies like Con-Way Transportation Services, a $2.6 bn freight transportation firm based in Palo Alto, California.

The biggest savings however, it has been marked, seem to come from slashing support costs. IT shops no longer have to send technicians to replace a dead drive or disinfect a virus-plagued OS. When a Neoware machine does fail, the IT department simply replaces it with a new one. A similarly afflicted PC would require one to two weeks downtime. This advantage allows organizations to offer higher quality support and devote more time to support the applications and needs of each user, and not just their PCs.

In all, the thin has set the industry standard for client solutions at a more efficient and technologically superior level. Already industry verticals such as government, manufacturing and the IT/BPO sectors with structured work forces are investing in thin computing and other RCS solutions, where the benefits are far superior compared to the standard computing solutions on offer.

Hence, the verdict is clear. A mobile thin client paired with a blade PC in the data center in a CCI implementation is the ideal RCS architecture we should be moving toward. And coupled with 3G broadband wireless notebooks soon to be launched in India, this techno thin diet is going to add a new dimension to the term razor edge of technology.

P Raghuraman - The author is country manager, emerging businesses, personal systems group, HP India