HELP REQUEST: Anyone into thin clients / Webization of local apps? Please read

Menneisyys · 10-24-06, 05:16 AM

This time I’m asking for help :)

As you probably know, in real life, I’m an IT consultant giving advice to companies on networking architectural, databasing, TCP/IP, programming and last but not least mobile computing questions.

My new task is giving advice (writing a complete booklet on) on in which direction a given company should go: Microsoft Terminal Servers (with, possibly, Citrix Metaframe) or just “webizing” their in-house, custom-written current applications (whenever possible) - that is, converting it to be Web/ client-side (Ajax / JavaScript / ActiveX) and server-side (Java / ASP etc.).

For this, I’m looking for case studies. For the two distinct cases, I’ve found several case studies (that is, I don’t really need case studies that only discuss why a given company abandoned fat clients and went for, say, Citrix); I’d still need case studies that directly compare the two alternates and explain why a given company decided for one or the other and what influenced their decisions.

That is, if you know of, for example, magazine articles or anything of interest in this very subject (that is, preferably unbiased comparison of the full MS Terminal Server / Citrix solution to converting local apps to run off the Web and using “thin” Web browsers to access them in the company), I’d be highly grateful if you could share it with me – hope I haven’t run into it so far. Just a URL would be sufficient.

10-24-06, 11:16 AM

I'm an IT consultant for a living too - and use thin clients at a number of clients (all are over the moon with their results) - unfortunately I don't have any good links that directly address what you're after - but, if you haven't already been there, maybe try http://www.msterminalservices.org/ as a good jumping-off point to articles / other possibly helpful resources.

Sorry I couldn't be more help on the very rare occasion that you want some ...

AKAJohnDoe · 10-24-06, 12:43 PM

I have some expeience with web-izing legacy applications using SOAP, WebSphere, and the like. I have used Citrix in some special cases, but VPN seems more common these days, even though they actually do quite different things.

There are probably a number of IBM Redbooks on the subject.

Menneisyys · 10-24-06, 03:37 PM

Thanks for the both of you.

In this case, web-izing their legacy app would take quite some time (it's a complete, large system) and they have pretty good connectivity; this is why I think Citrix will be the best solution for them.

10-24-06, 10:58 PM

Hey, I'm sure you already are thinking about this, but just in case - it's worth weighing up whether your client will really get mileage out of the (very few) additional strengths of Citrix that are not matched by out-of-the-box Terminal Services within Windows Server 2003 - as Citrix (particularly Support & Maintenance) is expensive ...