Thin Client Devices don't save you money!

DATE: August 4th 2010

During my discussions with a representative from Citrix in trying to get the license costs down, I was amazed at the same old twaddle in relation to cutting costs. The one where, the license cost stays the same but hey man, look at the other savings you'll make with our VDI technology.

"Well, think about the cost savings of using thin client devices instead of expensive fat desktop machines, the TCO savings alone will be amazing."

I replied,

"We have many multimedia users and to cater for their needs, we would need to buy high end thin client devices capable of HDX, which cost nearly twice as much as what we're paying for desktops that easily service their needs." and then after a long pause, a reply came back,

"Yes but with VDI, you'd save money on having less people to manage the solution"

To which I replied,

"I don't think so, firstly we'll need to bring more specialist people in to design and build the solution, then we'll need to hire more people to manage it and, yes the big AND, we're already short staffed, so where can we cut staff?" then I added,

"We'll also need to pay for additional resources to cater for the extra layer of management we'll need to manage the thin client devices on top of our current SCCM solution we use for desktops and there's no way, we can get rid of SCCM completely!"

All in all it was a fruitless exercise, as on paper I couldn't get the cost savings needed to make the VDI solution viable to the people that held the purse strings. The same old arguments for using thin client devices just don't wash anymore.

Why fix something that's not broken?

Which is exactly what we have with our current SCCM managed desktop solution, which works fine. The resources needed to manage this are readily available at a reasonable cost, should we need to expand. Whilst VDI is so new, it needs expensive specialists who are difficult to find. It's a bit like Citrix technologies several years back, where consultants could name their price, but as the technologies evolved and expanded, with more professionals jumping on board, the cost for people has dropped dramatically. VDI has a long way to go before it reaches the same comparable cost levels for resources.

So that was the end of looking at VDI strategically, it was dead in the water, so the only option left was to look at it tactically, as a stop gap for areas where we we're having problems.

From a techie perspective, VDI is great but from a business perspective it's difficult to justify the costs, which is the most important factor. It doesn't help the cause when the license costs are so prohibitive with some solutions.

Microsoft VDI

Maybe the VDI options from Microsoft may provide the silver lining which can steadily bring VDI into the equation. I've already started looking a RDS as a serious thin client solution and many organisations I've spoken to are also looking at RDS the same way. This might then give confidence in branching out to Microsoft VDI solutions too.

High end Thin Client devices will need to become more attractive in price, to make them suitable for users who demand as much as they are getting from their current desktop solutions.