Definitions: Client System Configuration

Definition

The only way organizations can be assured that their network  infrastructure is configured to deliver the required volume and quality of  traffic in and out of their data centers is by fitting all of the elements in a  consolidated and automated management system.

In addition, there are growing requirements stemming from compliance standards and green thinking.

Business Applications

Thin clients are cheaper, easier to manage and use less  energy than the standard business desktop. But, now, what once was a drawback,  an inability to process large multimedia files, may no longer be a problem with  beefed-up processing and newly redesigned software from the major vendors. Some  experts suggest that growth is coming in this industry because of these “green and cost-effective alternatives to expensive and difficult to manage PCs.”

Other opportunities include HP’s Virtual Client Essentials and the Wyse Thin Client OS version 6.3 that includes a new collaborative processing  architecture that can detect heavy data applications on the server, such as  video and graphics processing, and shift that over to the client.

Technical Details

Big data centers, such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, now have  phenomenal purchasing power and they buy energy-efficient configurations. Server OEMs such as IBM, Dell and HP, in turn, take those and sell them to  other people. The interesting part is, all server OEMs have data-center [best  practices] areas now. They work with companies and ask, "what is the most efficient area for your data center?" That is a way to try to win sales.

You need to have centralized purchasing of the servers  that goes across all the different departments. The inefficiencies come from  all the different departments buying what they want as opposed to one department being a resource for others and saying, "here is the  energy-efficient version." (See Unleashing the Friendly  Green-Eyed Monster in Data Centers.)

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