Intel Study: Thin Client Competition Is Wide Open

Businesses are excited about client virtualization but no one model for getting there has a significant market lead over any other, according to a recent study conducted by Intel. That means there are plenty of opportunities for solution providers to advise companies exploring new compute models, says the manager of the chip giant's Emerging Model Program.

"The thin client story has been around for a long time, but there seems to be a resurgence of that story line in the industry. Yet when you look at the data, it's not playing out in terms of broad deployment," said Mike Ferron-Jones, discussing findings from Intel's "Emerging Compute Models & Their Status in the Market" study with ChannelWeb Thursday.

The study breaks out four "emerging compute models" and one older thick-client alternative, each of which has certain advantages and disadvantages, Ferron-Jones said. The "granddaddy" of thin-client (or more accurately, thin-terminal) technology is Terminal Services, represented by products like Citrix Presentation Server and Microsoft Terminal Server. The four emerging compute models studied by Intel are Virtual Hosted Desktop, Blade PC, OS + Application Streaming and Application Streaming.

While "virtualization" is often used in the popular press as a blanket term covering all thin-client models, the study separates the Virtual Hosted Desktop model from other, fundamentally different technologies. Intel is interested in those distinctions, Ferron-Jones said, "Because whatever model might be breaking away in the market will have profound impact on products we need to design for that market."

Among 705 "IT decision-makers" interviewed for the study, the most established alternative to thick-client systems, Terminal Services, scored highest in awareness of the compute model (96 percent); familiarity with the technology (84 percent); deployment in any capacity, including test installations (64 percent); and high-volume production installations (31 percent).

Interestingly, though, the study found that the Terminal Services model isn't being newly adopted by companies at nearly the clip that other, newer models are. While 64 percent of respondents said their companies have deployed Terminal Services in some capacity, just an additional 2 percent reported plans to deploy within the next two years. That 3 percent growth rate is dwarfed by a 27 percent anticipated growth rate for the OS Streaming (15 percent current deployment to 19 percent within two years) and Blade PC (26 percent to 33 percent) models; 21 percent growth for Desktop Virtualization (39 percent to 47 percent); and 20 percent for Application Streaming (30 percent to 36 percent).

"Everyone who wants it, already has it," said Ferron-Jones of Terminal Services, adding that while the data suggests that the newer models offer far more growth potential, "there's no breakaway winner in the market yet."

"If I had to pick a leader out of all of them, I'd say streaming as a whole is it, but that's a very tentative suggestion," he said, referring to the OS Streaming and Application Streaming models as technological "cousins" that could arguably be grouped in one bucket. Streaming solutions available now include Citrix Provisioning Server and Dell On-Demand Streaming Solution (OS Streaming) and Microsoft SoftGrid, Citrix Presentation Server, Altiris SVS, AppStream, LANDesk and Thinstall (Application Streaming).

Next: Citrix Spreading Its Bets Wisely