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Education

Thin client wins hearts of Asian educators

By Kelly Ng | 10 November 2009

The education sector was a major contributor to the growth of the thin client market in Asia Pacific’s public sector, a recent report has shown.

The public sector’s procurement of thin clients – terminals that depend on other computers for their processing power - grew 47 per cent from the second half of 2008. Much of the increase was due to the rising popularity of thin client technology among schools and universities.

Kowloon Junior School (KJS) in Hong Kong, which invested HK$1.3 million (US$167,750) to equip its two campuses with thin clients, is an example. One of the major drivers of adoption for KJS, which has 900 students, was the reduced cost of ownership - by as much as 50 per cent.

“Although the one-time acquisition cost is expensive, the add-on cost will be much cheaper,” said Joe Leithhead, IT coordinator at KJS. “A new PC set costs HK$7000 (US$903) and a notebook costs HK$10,000 (US$1290). I can get a thin client at half the amount - HK$4000 (US$516). Now we have the ability to expand at lower cost.”

Manageability is an important driver for adoption of thin client systems in schools where IT tasks are often delegated as additional duties to time-poor and non-technical teachers. Thin clients gave Australian Cherrybrook Technology High School “greater visibility over systems while lowering maintenance costs and time,” according to Principal Gary Johnson, who manages a school population of close to 2000. “There is no need for technicians to make trips around the campus to fix an issue – it is now as simple as a drag and drop interface”.

KJS noticed an increase in operational support efficiency of at least 20 per cent, added Frederick Wong, Supervisory ICT Technician. “Through the centralised management console, we can remotely monitor and control all thin clients. Now we can easily finish all the start-up and health check procedures every morning before school starts,” he said.

In the first half of this year, 419,000 thin client devices were sold in this region, up by 15.5 per cent compared to last year.

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