Reading, UK, 11 March 2010: Small businesses in the UK could be savings thousands of pounds in IT costs and management time by switching from their traditional computers to thin clients, according to research from IGEL Technology. A small company with five PC users could save £2,300 over the first three years and more than £6,000 over a 6 year period – the typical life of a thin client.
Annual costs per workstation below £600
Instead of conventional PCs with their own locally installed software (“fat clients”), employees would use small thin client devices, which look just like a small PC but run their software from a central server. This Virtual Desktop Infrastructure means that staff can still do all the same tasks as with their old PC but the running and maintenance costs are significantly reduced.
When distributed over six years, the costs for this kind of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) with five thin client workstations - including monitors, printer, keyboards and mice - comes to only £596 annually. In contrast, a comparable workstation in a conventional PC environment would cost around £800 per year. What’s more, in purely Linux-based systems (no cost for Windows® licenses), the annual per-workstation savings increase by almost another £100.