As an IT consultant/network administrator a few years ago, one of my clients was a small but fast-growing retailer with several remote locations spread across the country.  Having no trusted technicians available in some of these cities, it was a clear win when I chose to go with WYSE thin client terminals on many of these remote seats (I wrote a bit about that here).   While the idea of such simple and lightweight “web appliances” dates back to the late 90’s, despite a few short stints as The Next Big Thing, the devices never proved quite as popular as promised - but conditions now are more favorable than ever:

• Increasing functionality in the cloud mitigates much of the need for heavy client-side application installations (and the RAM/processor power/data storage they require)
• The current global economic climate certainly favors less expensive (and often computationally redundant) devices

There’s a third (and crucial) factor, though: now that wireless internet access has become nearly ubiquitous, we all place an increasing premium on portability (consider that by most accounts, laptop sales actually surpassed desktop sales for the first time during 2008).  What do you get, then, when you take all the innate advantages of thin computing and add today’s need for mobile computing?

The “netbook” - a small (8″ or 10″ screen) laptop with a lightweight operating system, long battery life, (and often) solid state disk (SSD) storage.  As with good bread, the Beatles, and text messaging, it’s Europe that’s been out in front on this, but that’s expected to change as US acceptance of the netbook grows.  In fact, while industry analysts at Gartner expect overall 2009 PC sales to decline by almost 12% (a historic high), they see netbook sales doubling.

To date, the low-power Intel Atom has been the netbook CPU of choice, but AMD and Motorola have each recently released new processors of their own aimed at this growing market.   As for what operating system runs on those chips, for now it’s come down to a battle between Microsoft and the Linux community (Apple having not yet demonstrated much interest in this lower-end market).  Google’s Android cell phone operating system has even been ported over to a netbook - an interesting possible future platform for the open source OS.

Many of the first netbooks ran a specialized Linux kernel, a trend that only looked to gain more momentum once Microsoft stopped stopped selling XP last June.  However, with the netbook trend starting to pick up, Vista proving too resource-hungry for many desktops (let alone netbooks), and with Windows 7 still months away, Microsoft had a change of heart - and recently decided to bring back XP Home, giving the OS a second life as their unofficial interim netbook operating system (until Windows 7 arrives, that is).  It’s an easy decision to justify: while netbooks are by definition leaner and meaner than traditional PCs, users still expect them to be more than mere terminals: in other words, people like their applications (and chances are pretty good the ones they’re used to are not going to be available for Linux).   Furthermore, despite (or maybe because of) the fate Vista met in the marketplace, many users still like XP - and in any event, to a less technical user, that oh-so familiar Microsoft desktop would have to look more reassuring (and less toy-like) than a Linux desktop - even if only on a purely emotional level.  Lastly, even if Vista was able to run on a netbook, licensing costs for the new OS would tend to put the machine well beyond the price point of the average netbook.

So, not surprisingly, the decision paid off for Microsoft: XP Home lives on and has beaten Linux out to ship on the majority of netbooks now sold (in a telling sign, HP recently stopped even offering Linux netbooks in otherwise penguin-friendly Europe).

Either way, in addition to all the other advantages, at only $200 to $400 each, these devices (much like smart phones) are inexpensive enough to be subsidized by long-term internet service agreements - so going forward it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which netbooks do not figure in heavily.   Microsoft, for one, agrees, and is committed  to releasing a lightweight version of Windows 7 optimized for netbooks (despite the economics of the netbook market dictating substantially lower license fees than Redmond is used to charging).

I think there might be one in your future too.

I know I want one - so it’s got to be cool, right?

The New York Times has discovered (or rediscovered) thin computing: a small simple device (or ‘terminal’) with just enough under the hood to send mouse & keyboard clicks to a server doing absolutely everything else.  Initially hyped as a challenge to Microsoft’s domination of the workplace desktop, the concept had its 15 minutes as The Next Big Thing a few years back, only to fall from favor due to network performance issues (while it’s acceptable if an application’s a teensy bit slower over the network, sluggish mouse and key response is a non-starter for most users).

But look at the advantages, though: rather than a $1000 workstation with Windows and Office installed, we’re talking about a simple paperback-sized box and monitor for $400, all in.  Granted, MS Terminal Server (and especially Citrix) licenses do cost, but on the other hand consider that there’s no fan noise, no hard drive failures, no long boot-up time, no virus susceptibility, no user-installed malware, space savings, power consumption savings – the list goes on and on.

And I speak from experience – several years ago, as the network administrator for a small business with half a dozen retail and office locations spread across  the country, I moved a good portion of my remote users to these devices.  This not only solved my problem of how to install and maintain remote these workstations, my client (who was growing quickly at the time) loved the immediate savings compared to the workstations they had been buying (even taking the cost of terminal server licenses into account).  I was a hero; life was good (in a keep-the-trains-running job like network administration, you tend to savor those win-win moments). 

While I chose devices from Wyse, as the NY Times article points out, thin client computing is becoming The Next Big Thing all over again - so there are more and more manufacturers out there.  So many, in fact, that it begs the question:

What about the home market?

What I’m getting at is the return of the web appliance.  Like thin clients, this is another concept from a few years back that never quite took off – the only difference being the addition of an onboard web browser of some sort (maybe the well-received Opera browser, since Sony is already embedding that into its new Internet Video Link hardware).  Because in a world of Hulu, Flickr, and Google Docs (services which, unlike Windows Terminal Server or Citrix, are generally free), a simple little box with a browser and a handful of drivers for peripherals would about do it for a lot of folks, wouldn’t it?

Clearly, cloud computing is The Next Big Thing now – at least Google thinks so, and Microsoft thinks so too.   The potential reliability and privacy issues of cloud computing might be a little easier to take if one also imagines potential upside of being able to radically simplify things for the home user.

So thin computing is back. Who knows, maybe the time is finally becoming right again for the web appliance too; maybe the browser is the new operating system.

Need any more proof it’s not your father’s internet anymore? This just in, from ZDnet – Microsoft is populating the new data centers it’s been heavily investing in lately not by the rack full of servers, but by the (wait for it…) shipping container full of servers. That’s right, trucks pull up and unload a shipping container chock full of pre-configured, pre-networked servers. Connect power and air conditioning to the shipping container, and you’ve just brought a serious amount of additional server capacity online. Enough failures, and the container is shipped out for repair.

Also from the ZDnet article, an astounding statistic: it’s unclear how many are additional and how many are replacements, but Microsoft adds approximately 10,000 server per month.
Ten. Thousand. Servers. Per. Month.

What’s behind numbers like that? In addition to web search, it also reflects Microsoft’s move towards a more vertically integrated approach towards cloud computing – and there’s not only Hotmail/MSN, but there’s also the recently launched (Google Apps competitor) Online Suite with hosted Exchange (rather than just sell the software, Microsoft clearly feels there’s a future in selling the service as well).

Another reason for the big push is the anticipated explosion of media over IP – as Microsoft’s general manager of infrastructure Arne Josefsberg puts it, “One of the big drivers for us that I see is the move to IP-based delivery of rich video.”

Besides insanely quick scalability, it should be noted that the shipping container scheme allows for more efficient cooling – and Microsoft is also working closely with its hardware vendors to eliminate all unnecessary ports and motherboard circuitry to further reduce power consumption. More on Microsoft’s green data centers here. Kudos.