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Hardware Trends: Faster. Smaller. Cooler.

By: Joanne Cummings

5/20/2008


5. Thin Clients Are Mounting a Comeback
Thin clients are also seeing a resurgence due to the new enterprise focus on virtualization, mobilization and green initiatives. IDC predicts that the market for thin clients will grow from 4 million units shipped this year to more than 6 million units shipped in 2010.

In addition to their current focus on supporting terminal services and Citrix-based apps, thin clients are now coming equipped and ready to handle virtualized apps. For example, San Jose, Calif.-based Wyse Technology announced in March that its thin clients based on Microsoft Windows XP Embedded, Wyse Thin OS and Linux will now ship with built-in support for VMware Virtual Desktop Manager 2, a component of VMware VDI, thus enabling Wyse thin clients to play in a VDI environment. Add to that their smaller form factor, security advantages and lower price compared with laptops, and thin clients can also be an effective alternative for your customers.

6. Wireless Is Becoming Ubiquitous
On the networking front, with all those mobile and virtual users running around, wireless is poised to become an even more integral part of your customers' infrastructures. Not only are internal wireless LANs prepped for a speed injection, but wide-area wireless solutions like mesh WiFi and WiMAX are also set to take off.

This is the year that the emerging 802.11n WLAN standard is set to be ratified, so enterprises building out new wireless LANs should make sure that their router and access points are marked "802.11n-ready." The new 802.11n is expected to quickly overtake the older 802.11b and g, especially as more enterprises require support for voice, video streaming and other data-intensive applications over their WLANs. The slower 54M bit/sec 802.11g equipment can't keep up, while the new 802.11n standard can theoretically reach speeds up to 600M bit/sec. And even if 802.11n's real-world speeds are more in the 100M to 140M bit/sec range, it's a huge improvement over 802.11b/g.

In metropolitan areas, your customers will soon be able to take advantage not only of WiFi mesh technology but also-finally-new high-speed broadband access via WiMAX, which promises speeds of 70M to 100M bit/sec. The WiMAX Forum projects that there will be more than 133 million WiMAX users worldwide by 2012, and that about 70 percent of those users will use mobile and portable WiMAX devices to access broadband Internet services.


Your Hardware Future
Taken together, these six hardware trends can help you meet your customers' escalating demands for anything that supports mobile, virtual and green computing. For example, in the nascent 802.11n/WiMAX wireless world, your customers and their employees could access energy-efficient blade servers running their secure virtualized desktops anytime, from anywhere, using their small, powerful and secure energy-efficient notebooks, all connecting up to the corporate network via ubiquitous WiFi/WiMAX networks.

And those kinds of scenarios are the best reasons to watch -- and take advantage of-these six key trends.


Joanne Cummings is a freelance technology journalist.