Stephen Withers
Thursday, 09 July 2009 12:45
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 4
"At the same time, we're seeing so many businesses in Australia looking towards cloud computing strategies. They're building web-based Intranet systems and applications and in many cases, all they need to do is get those applications out to the right users."
That's hard to argue with.
"That's why thin clients' time has come. You get all the security and management advantages that are inherent with that model but users don't have to compromise any more, because many web-based software products are now just as powerful as desktop equivalents."
So what's fundamentally different between existing thin clients and Google's proposal? It's not that nobody ever thought of a stripped-down version of Linux for thin clients - SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client, anyone?
Or is it just that nobody approaching Google's brand strength has tried?
"So many of our clients, and the businesses that we're talking to, are wanting to move all of their applications and systems to run inside the browser... Once you've achieved that, why do you need the bloat and management headaches of having to support all of those traditional desktops, which cause you so much angst in terms of security, lost or corrupted data and application maintenance?"
The first part sounds reasonable, but if it can be done, it can be done without Chrome OS.
But the second? See
page 3.
