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Sun introduces the "Sun Ray"
Doofuswrote to us about Sun's release of their newest effort to knock the PC off the corporate desktop.
The Sun Ray is essentially "a juiced-up monitor", and is a thin-client solution. Cost is 10$ per month for 5 years, or 30$ per month for a more powerful client. Not much technical details in the article, but we'll update with more links as these appear.Update: 09/08 01:15 by H :Thanks to Paul Tomblin for a huge PDF file with the tech specs.
It's really funny that after years of arguing the rising power of personal computers signals the death of mainframes, I'm now on the other side.
Since the early 1980's, the processor power of PCs has increased by a factor of almost 4000 and the strorage space by about the same amount. Where are the extra CPU cycles going? According to my NT task manager, 97% goes to the idle process! In a large organization, where does all the storage space go? Simple, hundreds of identical copies of the same applications such as Microsoft Office.
To understand why centralized computing resources like the SunRay have a chance, you must understand Total Cost of Ownership. In an enterprise environment, the cost of a network of computers is a combination of the price of the machines and software and the price of maintenence including factors such as software & hardware updates, periodic backups, and network administration. The upfront costs are dwarfed by the ongoing costs of support. The SunRay is directly targeted at reducing these costs.
My views of this topic have changed primarily because of the rapid bandwidth growth and improved stability of corporate networks. As 100kb/s and, in some cases, 1Gb/s connections proliferate, the differences between running an application locally and across the network diminish. But to the administrators, backing up 3 large machines is far easier than several hundred small ones.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
Actually, its not just straw man you've employed here. For example, mixing apples and oranges --
... static void public main(argv[], ... and so on ...
> 1) Java. Well, just print "hello" in Java:
>
> 2) Thin Clients.
I'm going to stop you right there. On one hand, I could simply say printf ("hello\n"); and be done with it. On the other hand, I could point out that Java is one of many indirect methods that can be used to interract with an X terminal. Even a clever one like this.
> Now someone has to configure all the security,
> even though there's only one user (who's only
> going the do a little test and then move on).
> I need to create user ids/home dirs/user groups.
Horrific, isn't it? Now imagine setting up a *PC*. There are scripts for creating users in UNIX. Get one set right, you've got them all set right.
Actually, Sun's got me sold on this. I'm going to order a handful of the boxes and pass them out to our database group. They'll eat them up, and I won't have to worry about what they're doing with their registry. Now that we've gone to a POP mail solution, I'm willing to bet a few PCs will disappear.
The off-topic nature of the rest of your message precludes me from responding.
Yeah, X-Terminal are great.
In our corporate environment we have 3 Terminal Servers with Citrix Metaframe installed on them. Damn things crash all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if the Sun terminals will support ICA, RDP as well as XDMCP protocols, or at least that these will be options when you purchase the equipment.
Does anyone know how these things boot up? Do they boot from ROM or from TFTP?
Another point, I can't think of anyone who bought Sun equipment to save money - £200 for a keyboard, ouch!!! (I am lead to believe that Sun resellers get considerable discounts, however)
1.Nobody needs dumb terminals in today's
workplace environment. Real computers are
necessary, not slick looking terminals.
OK, why? That's an awfully general statement,
with absolutely nothing backing it up.
2.A five year commitment is too long a
technology commitment in today's marketplace.
Not when only barely functionality is on the
desktop. Do you constantly upgrade your monitor?
With thin clients, you upgrade the SERVER. So
long as the client has enough colors, high enough
resolution, and doesn't break, they'll last for
YEARS. The hundreds of PCs you upgrade every two
years for $1k apiece is that much money you sink
into the server. And ~$100000 will buy one hell
of a server.
3.This won't integrate very well with a
Windows-centric economy.
Well then, I guess we should all nuke our Unix
partitions and go to Windows then, if there's no
point in trying.
4.It doesn't just involve buying a thin client.
It also involves buying the server, the software,
the administrators to configure it all and the
technicians to train the masses
Umm... the cost savings from buying hundreds of
PCs buys you the server. You'd need to buy the
software ANYWAY, whether its hundreds of single
user licenses or one network group license. If
you don't hire an idiot, you only need ONE admin
for the server, and the whole POINT of these
devices is that you turn them on and go. A person
who needs training to use a monitor or telephone
shouldn't be allowed near either.
I think the problem is you're stilling thinking
small... just you, sitting at a PC. These devices
were made for groups of hundreds of people, a
level where one independent machine per person is
a nightmare... where you DO need dozens of techs
and administrators and constant upgrading.
--
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/
Well, for one thing this is attractive to corporate CFOs.
While it would appear to most people that you're paying more for these devices than something like an e-machine, if you factor in the time value of money these boxes turn out to be pretty cheap. After five years, you'd have shelled out $600 for this box. If you're comparing this to the cost of a $600 computer, consider that you can take the initial difference in cash outlay ($590), park it in a safe investment that yields about ten percent annually, and have almost a thousand dollars in the kitty and the end of five years. To be financially equivalent over that time frame, a PC would have to cost about $375. CFOs are good at this kind of calculation, I've even known an exceptional few who could carry out this kind of calculation in their head. It's even better, because if this device is still operational at, say, three years out, it will likely have _some_ utility, whereas the PC is guaranteed to be nearly useless. Naturally, you have to also include the costs of servers and network infrastructure, but this is more than offset by centralizing support costs in many environments.
My main beef is that the lease period is too long. Five years is an eternity in technology; if the lease were three years and the monthly fee a little higher, say 12 or 13 dollars, the financial decision would be similar but the long term technical uncertainties less.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Uh huh. I could tell you how many accountants here that write excel spreadsheets all day have PIIIs on their desk. They're not all that complicated spreadsheets either.
Let's be realistic here, who really needs a PC on their desk:
Now, which will be more expensive in the long run? You have a $10/mo/person thin client, plus the $10k for a beefy server. Or you have the endless upgrades of $2k/person/year plus the $10k for a beefy server plus the cost of moving machines around, fixing broken hardware, etc.
The artical implies that these devices are aimed at corporate customers, who will be attempting to reduce costs. This device is going to cost them $600 over five years which, although cheaper than a PC, is still a considerable investment. This does not have 50% of the functionality of a PC, yet costs more then half as much.
The other big problem I see is that coperates tend to like runnning their own custom software packages, and customising the standard ones. IS Sun going to allow these packages to be uploaded to its own execution servers (and provide the necessaryt security), or is it intending that corporates buy their own servers. If the latter is the case then the total cost is not going to be far short of a PC anyway.
I think the basic idea behind thin clients should bring back the "good old days" of dumb terminals.
By good old days, I mean the days when you could walk up to any terminal in the office, log in, and everything would be exactly the same, because you are in your server account. The days when a sysadmin could install something once, and it took effect everywhere.
This should be done again with GUIs. The challenges are that graphics take more processing and bandwidth.
Someone needs to make a thin client that has all the computer parts except any kind of disk drive or other moving parts. It should boot off the network, and to run anything, copy the executable from the server into RAM. Any stored data it operates on should be written to and read from the server. All processing (except big jobs) and graphics rendering should be done on the client. That would both simplify things for the sysadmin and bring back the good old days. It would also operate very fast.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I'm actually curious to see what the resource requirements are to support a bunch of these things deployed in a company. One box per 5 clients? 25 clients? 50 clients? Is the server end a web server, or is it custom software for Solaris, etc...
It will be interesting to see how Sun balances forcing people to buy servers (which they want to do) with integrating this technology with a business's existing servers.
>Motor vehicles, library card system, pos terminals, etc
:P
I realise that this is Point Of Sale, but every time I see it, I keep thinking Piece Of Shit.
Anyone else have this Acronym Collision?
Jeez I should send that into Jargon Watch on Wired
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
>Sun needs to realize that people like their PCs.
>Whether you run Linux, Windows, MacOS, BEOS,
>whatever. We moved away from the
>mainframe/terminal paradigm for a reason
Sorry, I forgot, what was the reason?
I agree with you as far as the home market is concerned. But when it comes to corporate IT I can tell you that mainframes and thin-clients are very much alive. I personally don't like MS Windows Terminal Server, but the centralised appoach to IT facility provision is something that all medium-large companies should look at. Think of all the Windows registries that can corrupt themselves on a Workstation-Server network, now consider where you have 1 machine and Windows terminals off that 1 machine, there's only one point of corruption. X-Terminals have no moving parts.
Of course where Microsoft Terminal Server has failed is in uptime statistics - If you are going to base all your applications on the same (cluster of) machine(s) then you need high reliability, this is something that was present with UNIX and X-Terminals, but is seriously lacking in Windows Terminal Server.
We still use a mainframe for all our production systems as well. Our accounts systems still run on SCO and users connect to it via telnet.
As sysadmin, the last thing you want users to do is be able to install their own software, viruses and games and so on. This just creates overhead for support staff. The last company I worked for didn't even allow floppy disk drives on their workstations.
Cheap PCs are cheap up front. The thing is, the hardware cost is nothing compared to the cost of maintaining the things. Sure, a well-managed *nix workstation is easier to manage than an NT box under SMS or Tivoli, which is easier to manage than a Mac, which is easier to manage than a Win95/98 PC.
/. testosterone-fueled lust for playing with computer guts isn't shared by most people, nor will it ever be. Nor should it. Most people want nothing more than a foolproof, zero-maintenance way to run a range of general-interest apps. Sooner or later, the PC as we know it is going to become something only developers and hackers will want. Everyone else will be perfectly happy to plug away on a ROM-based box with high-speed net connectivity.
But all of these things, with their varying hardware, their local filesystems, and in too many cases their local apps and OS, are a total money pit compared to running thin clients, whether they're pure terminals, or something with local CPU but no local disk-based apps and data, like this.
Past NC attempts have been underpowered, and viable apps outside vertical markets have been few. But at some point, large businesses will be more than ready for the right thin-client machines.
Besides, our own
Will Sun Ray succeed? Ehh. The odds are certainly against it. Will something like it succeed in the next couple of years? Yup.
Sun Help's Rumor Page contains some corona references.
I'm not quite sure how this will play out, but it seems to be an overlooked factor. In terms of hardware cost, a network of independent PCs would seem cheaper to upgrade because there's such tremendous pricing pressure in that very competitive market segment. However, when you consider the human cost of upgrades, the thin-client solution starts to look pretty attractive. You can pretty much swap one server machine and everyone gets the benefit, without having to run around upgrading hundreds of differently-configured PCs. If you actually do need to upgrade the clients, that's easy too because the clients are stateless. Take the new one out of the box, switch cables, put the old one in the box...voila!
I know there've been lots of other thin-client paradigms, from Sun's own diskless (my brother always called 'em "dickless") workstations to X terminals etc., but somehow this one reminds me of nothing quite so much as Plan 9. It's really not a bad idea. The question is whether Sun - whose track record in these areas is less than stellar - can execute the idea well.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Two points here regarding the Sun Ray and Open Source:
:)
1] These boxes are a great way to push open-source applications to the business community. A site that is running a Sun Ray solution will easily be able to adopt OUR software. Its UNIX, folks.
2] Hmmmm... a little more nefarious, I suppose. I wonder if the Sun Ray could work off of an open source Linux solution?
I have a friend who works at Liberty Mutual. According to him, if you have a PC on your desk, and you install any software (repeat: ANY SOFTWARE) on it whatsoever, and you are caught, this is grounds for dismissal. Every PC's configuration comes from a "gold" CDROM that is maintained by IS. If a PC is found to have been "corrupted" by foreign software, it is immediately reloaded from scratch from the "gold" CD.
Some folks have been quite impassioned in this forum about the freedom and productivity that results from having one's own PC. No doubt there are many desktops at Liberty Mutual that are running "verboten" software, and no doubt there are copies of the "gold" CD floating around that are used to reload PC's that have "gone south," and no doubt all of this activity is occurring without anyone in IS knowing about it.
But from the *company's* standpoint, their policy is working. They don't have to run around supporting PC users (because everyone is afraid of getting caught, so all everyone ever does is reload from the "gold" CD instead of calling for help). The company believes that everything is wonderful. And the IS department believes they are in control of this wonderful imaginary world.
All of which is not unfunny. But here's the rub: IS is in charge of all the procurement decisions. And if IS is the customer, then the SunRay sure sounds like a terrific idea, doesn't it?
I guess I can relate this to my own experience as VP Engineering for a small technology company. One day a whole metric f**ckload of low-end Compaq PC's showed up in Marketing, Sales, and Administration. Some Compaq sales dude had sneaked in the back door and sold a bill of goods to guys who had absolutely no clue what they were buying (my personal theory as to why Compaq sales are off -- technical guys are pissed off at them for selling directly to the suits, and so as our power increases, we buy elsewhere for revenge). Well, those same dudes are buying SunRays.
Which begs the question, of course, as to whether SunRays are good or bad. I can see arguments both ways, most of which have already been made by others.
It takes two things for this to happen, and being part of this first-hand, I think thin-clients will help:
1) Users need to get out of the mindset that their PC is any slower than their neighbor's. The reasons that the accountants get PIIIs is because they see POs coming through for PIIIs for development, and they get jealous. A thin client may help level this playing field.
2) MIS has to step in and say "No, you're not getting the upgrade you think you need". I never had the authority to do this. A corporate policy of using thin clients again may help in this situation (only x, y, and z departments get PCs. Everyone else gets TCs).
I'm not saying this is a cure-all, and there are obvious holes, but it'll certinaly help.
Hey, this has some serious implications for US:
1] Don't overlook the obvious. These things run UNIX! The majority of open-source programming is in UNIX. This opens a clear path for the invasion of open source software into the enterprise. Yummy.
2] I wonder how much participation that something like Linux could have here. In their presentation, they talked about presenting NT apps via a Citrix server. Perhaps it can service Linux applications as well. Hmmmmm...
Hmmmmm... might even be more marketable to organizations that can't completely ween themselves away from a Windows App or two in the short term. Imagine one of these workgroup server having a bank of SunPCis (AMD K6 on a card), ready to launch a Windows App when needed. Yummy.
I always enjoy reading about people justifying terminals "Well, I wouldn't want one, but Susie down in accounting/Joe on the loading dock, etc,etc could use one". The thing about it is, people don't like being dependant on IS to take care of things. Thats why we had a PC revolution in the first place: people got tired of waiting for IS departments to 'get it', and went out and bought a bunch of PCs and took care of their needs themselves.
Terminals are GREAT in the proper environment--but users don't like them. And users, ultimately, are the ones who keep IS in business.
To address above points:
1. overly general. The notion of setup-and-forget is a good one, especially with the advent of NT
2. Five years *is* a long time in this industry, but I think the functionality we've gotten by adopting a 1 or 2 year upgrade cycle doesn't justify the associated costs.
3. Uh - sounds like it'll integrate very well, actually. That's the whole point of being able to run multiple clients.
4. Yup, you need a server. A comparatively small outlay (~10K). Long term costs for these boxes promise to be LESS than full computers - WinNT is an administrative nightmare that already requires a cadre of trained button pushers. Assuming these deliver similar functionality as xterminals, they make a lot of sense in a large corporate environment.
I feel this needs to be reiterated in the main thread.
I'm reading so much about how much easier terminals/network computers/etc are to manage. And I'm not disagreeing in the least. The time and costs required to manage a bunch of PCs grows exponetially with the number of boxes on the network. It's a given.
My problem is that everyone seems to be looking at this with a very narrow point of view. Which is also to be expected. The readers here are primarily technically proficient, intelligient people. And I'm sure that quite a few of them are full time sysadmins as well. And from their perspective, easier management and reduced cost of the network is top priority, as it should be, for the most part.
But you need to consider the welfare of the entire company (and this message is directed at business computing, since I'm sure we can all agree that none would want to give up their home PC for just a terminal).
If you have a company full of glorified data entry personell who don't have the ability/desire/intelligence/etc to use more than one or two applications, this works well.
But I believe that the added costs of hiring more adept people, giving them the tools and resources (PCs) to use their abilities will give the company as a whole a competitive edge. THIS is the correct reason for moving from a mainframe/terminal setup.
I'm sorry, lowering IS cost is meaningless if it means reducing the employees ability to do their job effectively. This of course requires the best employees possible, which is another topic altogether.
I'd much rather have one or two intelligent people with atmospheric salaries who can creatively solve problems than 30 entry level people who require a lot of hand holding and attack problems brute force. And if it costs more to maintain the network and to give them PCs for them to do what they need to do, so be it. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what they make and what they make the company.
As I read this article, this device is basically an X-Terminal. Which just proves that X-Terminals are great devices that aren't used nearly often enough.
:)
I used to run a 5000+ user UNIX environment, with over 500 X-terminals. Alone. By myself. With time to spare. The durn things never broke
The downside to X-terminals has been that they tend to have an up-front cost almost as high as a workstation. It could be that Sun Ray will fix this.
-- Slashdot sucks.
I mentioned this a few stories back, in the StarOffice discussion. Sun is not flexible enough to compete in the PC market, so what do they do? Try and manipulate the market to fit their business model. It's the network computer concept that they keep trying and failing with.
Sun needs to realize that people like their PCs. Whether you run Linux, Windows, MacOS, BEOS, whatever. We moved away from the mainframe/terminal paradigm for a reason.
This drives Sun crazy, since it threatens their extremely high margin server business (talk about price bloat). Where do you think Sun gets all these millions to buy StarOffice and give it away free? Or put so much development money behind Java?
Sun is robbing people for their servers. And they'll continue to do it as long as they can.
public class Hello {
public static void main(String [] args) {
System.out.println("Hello World!");
}
}
And in C++
include
int main (int argv, char **argc) {
cout "Hello World!";
}
I really don't see either as overly burdensome, and I can compile either to native code.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I'm wondering how long it will take before Sun (or anyone else) starts giving away 10 or so thin clients with every server. I wouldn't be against trying one of these machines, but I'm not willing to pay for something that may be of no use to me at all.
May be Sun should have add-ons like a barcode gun or a cash drawer attached to these things to show people how they could be used. I could also see admins using these things as a way the securely administrate a server (only certain thin-clients can have admin privilages).
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you!
Fooey. I should have known better than to try to use angle brackets in so-called "plain old text" mode. Need this weirdly named "Extrans" mode for that I guess, where text really is text.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I applaud Sun's noble efforts to return to the days of the mainframe and the terminal, but they concentrate on their server-side strengths and return their creative force to the Internet and away from getting people off PCs in general.
Sun has a serious credibility problem if it only provides a server-side solution. Especially when their biggest software initiative, Java, is really directed at displacing Windows on the desktop.
Sun's roots are in Workstations, they still make money in Workstations and have done suprisingly well in this market. I believe you'll find that they are not losing market share there.
This will sell well into accounts where Sun already has a strong Server presence. In completes their offerings. Now, Sun can more seriously address the whole IT infrastructure.
Sun will try to make this a lever into new accounts where those with lots of Windows desktops have been concerned that there would be integration problems. This may be an uphill battle for Sun.
There could be a huge growth potential here in "green screen" applications. Windows has failed to go into a whole bunch of markets (POS, Banks, ATMs, etc.) that are still dominated by green screens because the PC/Windows TCO (think maintenance) is way too high. If Sun is able to get an attractive TCO here, then the NC could finally take off. These markets are extremely conservative, so they have not been attracted by the Java/NC hype today. If Sun can deploy a lot of working NCs they might be able to better make inroads. Once they had a significant presence in these kind of applications, a lot of typical desktops could follow.
Microsoft is trying to address the green screen market with various Windows CE initiatives. If Sun looks to be making inroads here, expect a huge investment on Microsoft's part to fight it.
It is an intolerable situation for Sun, in the long term, for MS and/or Linux to dominate the desktop in their accounts. Ultimately, Linus is right, who controls the desktop controls the industry.
AFAIK, a lot (most? more?) of ATM's you use are self-contained PC's in their own right. I think I've even seen a picture someplace of a Windows blue-screen on one...
What many of the thin client vendors (and many in the Open Source community) miss out on is that not every business is using computers to run MS Word, Excel, and IE. We're running a scheduling a business package on an Alpha Microsystems box (?) and using dumb terminals. Sadly, I can't just use VT100 emulation, as the emulation mode is called AM-65. Looked high and low a few months back, and the only terminal emulator I found is made by the SOB's who make the system. Yes, we are looking to replace it, but the funds to transfer the information from the old system to the new just aren't there.
Then there is the vendor of our computer based medical records system. Unhelpful. Totally MS based. No chance of Open Source (we are a "development partner" and we can't even get the source. Not that there are any programmers here, but it's the thought that counts. What we do is develop templates that are then passed around to the other users without credit being given). No chance of a Linux, X (in general), Wince, Palm, or MacOS port.
So what does that have to do with these new terminals, or any thin terminal? Quite frankly, I'd love to use them here at the office. Doctors are not the most technically savvy folks. Sure, they can use the latest laser to burn away part of your colon, but I have yet to meet one who could program their VCR (lest the MD's flame me, I've been around docs since I was born. Unless you're about 60 years old or so, I've been around more docs than you) Anyway, thin clients would be a lot easier to manage, and would give me more time to start my business from my cubicle. But the numbers don't make a damned bit of sense. For just a tiny bit more than $10/mo, I could lease a MUCH better machine (even if it's saddled with NT, which, once running, is much better than 95/98). Of course, I'll be leasing for only three years, as a five year lease for computer equipment is foolish. We've got some stuff due to be finished with the lease in about six months, and the leasing companies are hard pressed to give us a buyout, as there isn't much of a market value for 486/DX4's and Pentium 66's.
So while thin clients are nice, the lack of supported applications is sad, the price is absurd, and it just doesn't work. Thin clients work quite well with CLI's, but until someone has a sanely priced graphical client, what's the point? Wyse and Sun have missed the boat. If they are going to make this work, they are going to have to work with vendors and developers to come up with more web enabled apps, java apps, and other tools that are not as mundane as word processors.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I forget who said it, but "you can lead a whore to culture, but you can't force them to read".
I believe it was Dorothy Parker, and the quote was 'you can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think'.
Erudite? Smartassed? Take your pick. I know I have.
They are _extremely_ dumb, not even X terminals. Instead you have a terminalserver, that runs one X server for each SunRay terminal. Then the bitmapped graphics is transfered over the network, in some compressed format, all the terminal does is send the keyboard and mouse events the other way, and put the graphics in the framebuffer. Exactly like VNC and Citrix, not something that sounds very intelligent.
I have only used them briefly, but they actually seem very fast. Ofcourse I don't know how they stack up under heavy load. Don't expect fullscreen MPEG on them though
Tech details: 1280x1024 @ 76 Hz
24-bit colors
10/100 Mbit Ethernet connection
Composite video input
Stereo audio out/Mono microphone in
4 USB port
ISSO approved smart card reader
The setup is 100 terminals, with 50 each on a Sun250 Terminalserver (Dual USparcII, 2G ram)
These only do the graphics, 50 X servers on each there is a HPC6500 for the CPU power with a couple of E10K to come.
I don't know if the page describing the new setup is available from the outside but try:
Databar update
Morten Olsen (not AC)
Unfortunately, the same technology that enables people to waste time is what they need to do real work. You can surf random sites on the web, or you can learn stuff you really need to know for your work. The same mechanism does both.
In other words, if you can't use one of these devices to surf the web and waste time, they are profoundly useless. Somehow I have a feeling you can - no problem.
D
----
Remember, it not $600 for a computer to replace the one you use now. Not only do you need the client hardware, you also need to server on the backend. So the client hardware really doesn't do anything but to display the desktop. In 5 years it'll do nothing but display the desktop. So it'll work just fine. The *only* reason I could see to "upgrade" it would be to have a bigger monitor. But even that's not needed. I think that 5 years is how long the hardware will last before giving out though. Okay, it'll probably last a little longer, but you'll still be replacing it with just the same device.
All the upgrades will happen on the server. So over 5 years time instead of replacing hardware, and software at each desk, you will only need to upgrade the server, both hardware and software, as needed. But the client device will continue to do the same thing, year after year after year.
The fact that this is just about as cheap as a real PC is just a side benefit. Really, the cost of the PC is only a fraction of the Total Cost of Ownership. You have to add in the costs of support, of keeping PC's up to date, of lost productivity time due to crashes and reboots. The Sun Ray eliminates most of these costs resulting in a TCO of Server$/users + $600 per user, instead TCO per user = Server$/users + $800 + total support cost/user + total upgrade and replacement cost/user.
I wish I had a study handy to link too on the TCO of PC's. Studies have been done, and TCO is high. The Sun Ray will reduce costs dramatically.
-Brent--