Thin Clients: A Cost-Effective Way to Improve Security

IDC Executive Brief, January 2004

Introduction
Enterprise thin clients can offer organizations an opportunity to achieve two seemingly contradictory goals: improving security while lowering IT costs.

Thin clients are diskless desktop devices that rely on a centralized server for their computing power. In contrast with a typical PC that may download applications via a client/server environment, thin clients are fully dependent on servers: all data and applications are stored on servers.

Conclusion
A particular technology can no longer continue to provide a large competitive advantage if it has become ubiquitous. Client/server- based PC networks have reached that level of ubiquity.

Thin clients can provide an alternative that allows companies to maintain the same - or even higher - levels of computing power and security for a lower overall cost. For certain departments and users, thin clients provide an excellent opportunity to save money while improving security. Many of the security problems that are the hardest to fix in the PC-centric world become far less worrisome in a thin client environment. Meanwhile, thin clients work well with the current trend of organizations trying to exercise central control to improve security, privacy, and efficiency.

For organizations that would like to install thin clients, the first task is to determine who within the organization would use them and how. If the project must be sold to management or IT, it is best to emphasize how thin clients allow companies to achieve the seemingly mutually exclusive goals of saving money while improving security. Companies should also look toward complementary technologies, such as wireless, that have made thin clients more powerful. Finally, companies should look at thin clients and centralized IT as a way to deliver a strategic advantage to their organizations.