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Contact information
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Telephone: +44 (0)1189 342 200
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Press Releases
Wyse makes Cloud Client Computing accessible to more UK businesses with the introduction of its new T50 thin client
Wyse Highlights Broadest Ever Portfolio of Cloud Client Computing Solutions Helping Organisations Exploit Post-PC Era at IPExpo London 2011
Wyse Unveils Expanded Strategy for Cloud Client Computing, Mobile Cloud Business Unit
100831Wyse Unveils Expanded Strategy for Cloud Client Computing Mobile Cloud Business Unit.doc 809.00 kB
Case Studies
Integrated Dental Holdings
Top UK Dental Surgery Network reduces burden on IT support with Wyse thin clients
Integrated Dental Holdings (IDH) is one of the UK's leading dental groups, with two million patients and a network of over 250 practices nationwide. The organisation specialises in providing UK primary care trusts a unique support network. With over 1500 professionals, the IDH is committed to leading the way in patient care by encouraging practices to share the benefits of its network. As part of its professional network, IDH provides the 250 dental practices countrywide with IT support. As part of an initiative to review current systems and both reduce costs and tighten IT security, IDH decided to replace current standard PCs with thin clients.
100408 Wyse UK IDH Case Study.pdf 217.19 kB
Wyse Standard Bank Case Study
A move to a new London landmark headquarters built to the latest environmental standards triggered an IT revolution for a top international bank.
Today, Standard Bank is reaping the benefits of a completely new Wyse thin computing and VMware virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) that was implemented successfully in less than a year and is one of the largest in Europe.
Wyse Standard Bank A4 Case Study final 190809.pdf 609.53 kB
New College Durham
A three year project to replace 1,200 PCs with Wyse zero clients is set to end the cost and IT management headaches of a major college in the North East of England.A three year project to replace 1,200 PCs is set to end the cost and IT management headaches of a major college in the North East of England. In the first year of an ambitious virtual desktop infrastructure programme, the choice of Wyse P20 zero clients already is transforming the computing experience for students and staff, delivering on promises of higher performance desktop computing, ease of management and cost savings.
New College Durham is one of the leading colleges of further and higher education in the North East, with academic performance and success rates placing the institution in the top 10% of all colleges nationally. The college serves over 10,000 full and part-time students who study a wide range of courses in a purpose-built campus on the outskirts of Durham, County Durham.
Information technology is a key ingredient in the college’s success with PCs located across the campus in classrooms and general student areas, in addition to administrative offices. But, the large estate of over 1200 PCs was presenting the college with cost and management challenges that needed to be addressed.
The college identified that they had to plan for a four year replacement cycle for the mid range desktop PCs used extensively across the campus. After four years of heavy use PCs became increasingly unreliable, requiring more maintenance and support.
In addition to the unreliability of the PCs having cost implications, the college found any upgrading or changes to the PCs extremely time consuming. All major work on the desktop infrastructure had to take place within a tight time-frame in July and early August when the IT team could have unhindered access to the systems. Upgrades required the team to physically work on each PC to re-image the settings or do the required downloads of new software. With classroom having 25 PCs each this became a major exercise taking many man hours.
As George Wraith, Head of Systems, New College Durham explains: “These cost and management issues were the main drivers for us to review our desktop strategy and rethink our entire approach. We really wanted to be in a position of not having to repurchase our entire PC estate every four years and find a solution that allowed us to easily upgrade desktops quickly whenever we needed without the crazy logistical pressures we had experienced before”.
Desktop virtualisation was a natural route to take because the college had already virtualised its server farm. However, a full range of desktop solutions were evaluated including one that kept the existing PCs.
George says: “We considered sticking with the current desktops and installing a very basic operating system and VMware View client. Obviously this extends the life of those older desktops but we quickly realised this defeated the whole object of what we wanted to do because the support issues remained. So it became clear that desktop virtualisation had to be the strategy and the only question was what was the best product solution for meeting our specific cost and management requirements?”
New College Durham did an extensive evaluation of the thin client products on the market. In the end they chose a zero client, the Wyse P20, which, unlike all of the thin clients, could deliver a high quality end user experience without any operating system on the device. The P20 also is optimised for VMware View 4.5 with the high performance graphics capabilities and multi-media support not found on any competing solution.
“When we came to look at it, the P20 ticked all of the boxes for us. All of the thin clients came with some embedded software which would have to be managed. As a true zero client, the Wyse P20 has no operating system so all you have to do is deliver the image to the hardware. Not only does this mean no maintenance headaches at the desktop but also there’s a cost saving too because you don’t have to pay for additional licences for embedded OS on each machine”.
The decision also answered the requirement for a desktop for the long term. Compared to the existing desktop PCs, the Wyse P20 costs less and has a lifespan of up to ten years, enabling the college to budget for the future.
“In the current economic climate, the lower upfront capital costs combined with much longer life expectancy with no reduction in performance delivers huge savings for the college. We know that with the Wyse solution we have a desktop infrastructure that can support whatever changes occur to operating systems and software in the future.”
Alongside these operational benefits, the college is expecting to make major energy efficiency gains from the significantly lower energy consumption of the P20s over the PCs that they are replacing. In fact these projected savings were a key factor in convincing the college’s financial director to release funds for the whole project in the first place.
As George explains “With energy costs rising, the advantages of moving from PCs that consume 200-300 watts to zero clients delivering the same functionality on seven to eight watts adds up to a significant saving when multiplied across 1200 units switched on for seven to eight hours a day five days a week and ten and a half months a year.”
Altogether the expectation is that the new virtual desktop infrastructure will yield a much better and faster return on investment for the college.
“In deciding to migrate to Wyse zero clients, we did a full ten year return on investment analysis that came out at saving the College over £1 million. We were deliberately conservative in this ROI and actually budgeted to replace the original P20s after 7 years and still got the stated savings. However, we very much doubt whether we will need to actually replace the P20s until after the 10 year period, which will add substantially to the ROI savings.”
The new virtual desktop infrastructure of Wyse P20s and VMware View 4.5 is being implemented in three phases during the college’s summer breaks with the last 400 zero clients scheduled for installation in summer 2012.
The college’s IT team completed the first phase of the PC replacement programme in summer 2010 when they replaced all of the PCs in the college’s learning resource centre, as well as in a large number of the classrooms. The roll-out also coincided with the college migrating from Windows Vista to Windows 7, adding pressure on the VDI implementation to go smoothly.
The first experience of installing Wyse zero clients impressed George and his team. “It was an absolute joy. Once we had taken away the PCs, we simply plugged the P20s into the power and network connections that were already there and the system was ready to use. To be honest the more difficult decision we faced was where to start on the replacement programme.”
In this first phase, the college has focused on the desktops used for everyday computing tasks by students on the campus. The new zero clients provide access to standard Microsoft Office applications, the Internet and programming tools. The plan is to extend the zero clients to support more complex applications in the next two stages and cover all academic and administrative staff.
“We wanted to start from the desktops used most widely by students and then roll out the VDI to more specialist areas. The P20s are an ideal platform for us because they are optimised to support the widest range of applications from standard office applications to high-end multimedia and CAD packages. This is critical for us given the breadth of courses we teach.”
Running the new zero clients alongside PCs has put the benefits of VDI in sharp relief. For example end user reaction has been positive mainly because of the faster start up time of 40 seconds on the zero clients compared to four minutes on the remaining PCs. Students have enjoyed getting to their applications and personal data much faster than before. The IT team have found the zero clients have required significantly less day to day attention and have made support for the 400 zero clients a part time requirement for one team member. This compares with the PCs that require a support team of up to eight team members.
“We’ve found the P20 is delivering on its promise and more in terms of ease of management and end user experience. Some handholding has been necessary especially as users have regarded any problem as a fault with the new desktop. However, on investigation, this turns out to be an issue with application and not the P20 at all. In fact, users are clamouring to use the zero clients because they’ve directly experienced the comparison in performance over the PCs.”
Having successfully implemented the first phase of the programme, the college is committed to completing its transition from fat PCs to a virtual desktop infrastructure based on the Wyse P20 zero clients that take full advantage of VMware View. Ultimately this infrastructure will enable more students and staff to access the most powerful and productive applications without any of the cost or management disadvantages of traditional PC desktops.
As George says: "Migrating to virtual desktops with Wyse zero clients means our students and staff will enjoy a better end user experience even when using the most intensive multimedia applications and data. The feedback from the first users is extremely positive as they notice how much faster and more responsive the zero clients are. Ultimately the whole project will make greener, more cost-efficient computing integral to how the college provides a first class education."
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Whitepapers
Ovum Technology Audit - Wyse Technology
The impact of client devices within an IT strategy is becoming more significant as desktop virtualization and cloud computing adoption accelerate. Wyse Technology is addressing this with its Cloud Client Computing product portfolio, which brings together thin-client technology, new categories of zero clients, and cloud PCs, with virtualization and infrastructure software.
Wyse Technology - Wyse Cloud Client Computing (TA001883IMT).pdf 194.50 kB
Products
Wyse Quick Guide
The Wyse thin computing range of fully integrated software and hardware products delivers the best user experience available over the widest choice of virtualized fixed and mobile desktop environments. Today, businesses and organisations across diverse industries and market sectors around the globe, depend on Wyse desktop virtualization and thin computing products that are cost effective, secure and green.
Wyse Quickguide UK web AW 290711.pdf 942.21 kB
