VMworld 2014: Dell Launches Its First Intel-Based Thin Client

On the first day of the WMworld conference in San Francisco, Dell launched its first Intel-based thin client PC, the Wyse 3000. This tiny box fits on the back of a monitor and runs Windows Embedded 7 on a Bay Trail chip.

The company also added PC-over IP (PCoIP) capability to its Wyse 5000 thin clients, and announced the brand new Wyse Datacentre for VMware Horizon DaaS product.

“The [thin client] technology is viewed by a lot of people as mature, but there are still things that we can do to drive performance, bring the cost down, simplify deployment and management – and all these things are going to build momentum in this market,” David Angwin, director of marketing at Dell told TechWeekEurope.

Desktops far away

The Wyse 3000 is a high-end thin client that offers Windows Embedded in a tiny chassis. It is based on a dual-core Intel Bay Trail processor which draws just 6W of power.

The device can connect to “almost anything”, Dell says, including scanners, bar code readers and printers. It supports up to two displays and can be managed on premise with Dell Wyse Device Manager or in the cloud with Dell Wyse Cloud Client Manager.

Dell has also upgraded its recently launched Wyse 5000 all-in-one thin client with support for PCoIP. This image streaming protocol , developed by Canadian virtualisation specialist Teradici, is based on User Datagram Protocol (UDP), an Internet protocol widely used where an application wishes to avoid the higher overhead of the more traditional Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

With PCoIP, images rendered on the server are captured as pixels, compressed and encoded and then sent to the client for decryption and decompression. This enables a responsive, high resolution, full frame-rate video stream that erases the perceived differences between VDI and traditional desktops.

Additionally, Wyse 5000 and 7000 thin clients have now been configured to support SUSE Linux, while Wyse Datacentre for VMware Horizon View now offers Virtual SAN, new graphics capabilities and higher user density.

The all-new Wyse Datacentre for VMware Horizon DaaS offers end-to-end Desktop-as-a-Service solution for public cloud, private or hybrid environments, built with tools from Dell.

As the traditional PC business is going down the drain, Dell is rapidly expanding its cloud client computing portfolio with technology acquired from Wyse in 2012. Earlier this year, the company launched Wyse Cloud Connect – a thin client device not much bigger than a USB memory stick that runs Android 4.0 and features Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, along with a Micro SD card slot.

“Now, we’re shifting gears to focus on letting you know how Dell is different from other vendors, in making desktop virtualization simpler and less costly to implement, manage and own,” explained Jeff McNaught, CSO for Cloud Client-Computing at Dell.

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