How to implement low cost Citrix clients in your business

With cash conservation being key in business, there is a need for all business owners and managers to evaluate their IT and ensure that they are getting the maximum return from their IT investments, that the tools are enabling workers to meet the needs of the business and the goals of the business and that overall, there is a quantifiable return on investment.

The current economic climate means that reductions in capital spend are inevitable. If you're a business owner, you'll be sitting on your hands and taking things one day at a time. You will only invest money (1) if you have it, and (2) if your business needs it. With the use of Open Source software, the capital outlay and ongoing costs for an IT solution are greatly reduced due to software cost negation which often follows through to minimal support costs.

For Citrix, it's typically the case that the initial capital outlay is higher than traditional desktop deployments but it's cheaper in the long run to support. I was implementing Citrix at a company and was determined to ensure that the per seat cost was going to be equal to or less than the traditional Citrix solution.

What I set out to do was to engage with my local reseller to get the lowest cost desktop cost possible. I spoke with Dell and even tried to buy their cheapest home PC. Why?

I wanted to run Linux on the desktops and effectively turn them into dumb terminal that would connect to Citrix Presentation Server. The supplier eventually agreed to purchase pallets of second user PC's from a company that specialises in reconditioned units. The devices were old Compaq Deskpro EN SFF devices, the added a keyboard, mouse and 17" flat screen.

Cost per desktop: £140

The software that was installed was Linux Thinstation. Thinstation is a thin client Linux distribution that makes a normal PC a full-featured thin client supporting all major connectivity protocols: Citrix ICA, NoMachine NX, 2X ThinClient, MS Windows terminal services (RDP), Cendio ThinLinc, Tarantella, X, telnet, tn5250, VMS term and SSH.

The cost of designing the solution was approx: 2 days. Let's say that was £200.

Divide that design cost by 600 which was the number of desktops that benefited from it is 0.33p per desktop.

Add that to the cost of the desktop and for hardware and software, it comes in a miniscule £140.33p per machine.

I could not get a cheaper and more reliable solution anywhere. And after 3 years, it is still going strong.

There are always alternatives such as 2X Virtual Computing Software where you can get free clients from the deployment their 2X ThinClientServer free edition. And if you click on the links around my Blog, I'm sure you'll uncover some more nuggets of useful information.