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GCN Home > 03/03/08 issue

PC over IP: The next wave in thin clients

IBM, ClearCube employ Teradici chipset to transmit data, graphics over IP network

By Rutrell Yasin

An emerging approach to thin computing goes beyond the delivery of applications to clients, instead delivering — in effect — the PC.

Called PC over IP, the technology uses chipsets that compress the entire PC experience at the data center and transmit it over a TCP/IP network to thin-client devices, where it is decompressed and made ready for use.

The benefits are ease of management and better security because no applications reside on the users’ clients, experts say.

IBM and ClearCube Technologies — both well-established in the government sector — have jumped on the bandwagon, incorporating the chipset from Teradici in their blade server technologies. Experts see a role for the technology in defense, intelligence and civilian agencies.

“Instead of accessing the Internet with the PC, the phenomenon of PC over IP means your entire PC workloads — your spreadsheets, your word processors — are being hosted remotely. Then you can have a thin device that is low-power and lightweight to do the work” at the user’s site, said Tom Bradicich, a fellow and vice president of Rack/Blade/x86 servers at IBM.

Hardware approach

“Teradici stands unique in that it is a hardware approach to moving the graphics and video over the network,” he said.

Bradicich said a blade system with the Teradici chipsets could appeal to government agencies because data and applications are protected at the data center rather than residing on desktop or mobile devices.

Also, communications over the Internet or the local-area network between the data center and thin client are encrypted with the 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard, and the management and USB communications, such as keystrokes, are protected by Secure Sockets Layer security.

The IBM BladeCenter HC10 solution with the Teradici chipset was introduced in September. Bradicich said some government users are evaluating it.

“What’s cool about the Teradici technology is that, for the first time, power users can take advantage of this full-performance desktop capability unhindered by distance,” said Susanna Kirksey, vice president of marketing at ClearCube.

Many user port devices link to the data center via Category 5 telephone cable, which has a 200-meter distance limitation, she said. With PC over IP, all desktop functionality can be transmitted over a TCP/IP network, so mission- critical environments do not have distance limitations from the data center to the desktop, she said.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, IT Security, Data Management, Enterprise Architecture, Hardware



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