Thin Client

Some installations may not warrant a full scale deployment of an IT Infrastructure (e.g. an ‘office’ of 2 people) or alternatively you may not have an easy way of getting support staff to the office (e.g. a remote office in the Highlands).

In this case we would recommend the deployment of ‘thin client’ technologies.  In essence, applications are run on a central server, perhaps at head office where the support staff are available. The applications are then displayed on a ‘terminal’ or virtual Windows PC to the user. This solution requires a network link between the client and the server:

• Terminal Server is effectively a multi-user NT system with the display portion available via a "thin" client on the user's workstation, thereby giving the user a "virtual" Windows machine.
• Typically the cost of the Terminal Server hardware is significantly less than installing the application server hardware at the remote site
• The Terminal Server solution is usually more efficient on WAN bandwidth than running the same application over the network link in the conventional manner, as only the screen updates and not any data needs to be sent to the client.

Our experience has shown that a Terminal Server Solution is feasible over dial-up modems, ISDN lines and now also ADSL lines.  A quad-processor server with 1Gb of RAM can comfortably support up to 20 users of a CPU-intensive trading application, or alternatively, up to 100 users of Microsoft Office.