Are we going full circle? Lets Make PC's thin again..

It seems that the onset of VDI is bringing with it a number of requests again, one of which I am getting time and time again from clients is can I dumb down (thin) my existing desktop estate? This has been a request I have been familiar with since starting with Citrix technologies back in 1999, and it slowly started to become less frequent with many organisations wanting pure Thin Client environments or to provide a mixture of local processing power and applications with the benefits of remote applications. However, the more I engage with clients for VDI architectures the more I am getting questions raised again about thinning down the endpoint once again.

There seems to be two ways this is being achieved:

1. Windows-based Conversion Products

These products live in Windows, locking down the interface so that users can only do certain, pre-configured tasks. The software can be installed or deployed using your existing application deployment technologies.

2. Thin Client OS.

The products, while running on PC hardware, are running some version of a thin client or slimmed down operating system.

These solutions aren't as vulnerable to security problems, and can even be provisioned on boot so that the client is refreshed each time it's started. That way, if something should happen, the machine can just be powered off and restarted without any repercussions.

Management typically involves some sort of additional management infrastructure beyond that of simply managing Windows environments.