At Sun for the last 7 years, we've known that using Sun Ray ultra thin clients saves customers money while increasing security. We have over 25000 of them deployed and everyone from the CEO on down uses them. Our global mobility configuration allows me to move my running desktop session from my house to my office in McLean VA, to Broomfield, CO to Bejing China by simply taking my smart card with me. Trust me, the first time you see this work, in appears to be no less that magical.
The US Intelligence community saves a huge amount of money every year using Sun Ray thin clients along with our Trusted Solaris operating system to replace multiple workstations with a single display. That program, known as the DoDIIS Trusted Workstation has deployed thousands of Sun Rays.
"In the Defense Intelligence Community, we have been using the Sun Ray environment for the last three years now," noted Dr. Ryan Durante, the DTW Program Manager at the Air Force Research Laboratory. "The dual head capability, combined with the security of fiber to the desktop, sets Sun's newest offering apart from anything else on the market. We expect to save $5.6 Million over the next two years by migrating to the SunRay 2FS."
Most recently Verizon has installed over 5000 Sun Rays in their call centers and find it reduces their power bill, management costs while making them more "green." According to the article in Network World:
Verizon has seen a 60% to 70% drop in desktop problems and a 30% decline in electrical use at each center.Generally, Verizon had four dedicated tech staff members per 1,000 seats to handle desktop trouble tickets. With the Sun Rays, that’s been cut to one staffer.
How does the Sun Ray help the environment?
• Lower power and cooling usage. 4-7 watts vs. over 100 for the typical PC.
• Reduced waste. A Sun Ray has no disk drive, DVD drive or fans. When discarded it
has a significantly smaller circuit board, enclosure and power supply than a typical PC.
Our basic Sun Ray 2 weighs less than one pound.
• Improve real estate usage. At Sun we have reduced our real estate significantly because
of the "hot-desking" feature of the Sun Ray thin client. We can allocate 2-3 mobile workers
to one cube. This reduces waste, power, cooling and other factors.
• Improved resource utilization. Processors can be shared among users. No longer is a 3 Ghz
processor locked up in a box in the cube next to you while that person is out of the
office or on vacation. In this shared environment, many users can be allocated to a
small number of processors.
The Sun Ray thin client also helps to control costs in a number of ways:
• No patching required.
• No local software installation on each device.
• No reason to replace it every three years. We have Sun Ray devices over 7 years old.
Think of it as a VT100 terminal on steroids.
• Reduced system administration costs through centralized management.
• Upgrades for hardware (CPU, Memory, Disk) and Software (Word processing, mail, etc) occur
in a centralized location rather than on the desktop. A single a central Sun Ray server provides
additional power to all of its users.
• Reduced cost to move an employee. Simply pull out your smart card and switch to any
cubicle available.
• Reduced data loss and backup issues. All data is kept in centrally managed and backed up
data centers by professionals.
The Sun Ray can also increase your security posture for a variety of reasons:
• No hard disk drive, floppy or CD-RW device to be stolen, lost or to extract data
• USB ports can be disabled to prevent the injection of viruses or removal of data via flash
memory drives
• No operating system means that it's virus free and doesn't require constant monitoring,
securing and patching
• Smart Card authentication provides two factor security.
These are just a few of the benefits of the Sun Ray thin clients. DISA management has stated that they plan to move to a thin client architecture when they move their HQ from VA to Ft. Meade, MD.
Thin implementations have also taken hold in the United States. One of its advocates is CDR W. Stevenson Bowman, who is the officer in charge of the San Diego detachment of SPAWAR, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in Norfolk, Va. Bowman was involved with a thin-client implementation at the data center of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) in San Diego, where they were able to eliminate their help desk completely.
"The whole idea was to get rid of all the thick clients and the cost associated with them," Bowman said. They moved from Wintel PCs to Solaris running on a Citrix server. The agency first went from seven to two support personnel, then eliminated them completely.
Whether you are a Solaris, Linux or even Microsoft Windows shop we have many more success stories of Sun Ray deployments around the world.
If you would like to know how to take advantage of Sun's thin client computing technologies, give us a call today at 888.583.4956 or e-mail us at sales@ashbournegroup.com.
Sun Ray thin client saves customers big bucks and makes them "Green." : Jim Laurent's Weblog
http://blogs.sun.com/jimlaurent/entry/sun_ray_thin_client_saves
