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Digital Independence

author-image
DQI Bureau
New Update

Here are two

paradigms:



1. Year: 2001


Organization: Navbharat Petroleum Corp.

Type of

organization: Petro PSU giant
Location: India

Application:

ourBAP.com, web-enabled ERP
Project Champion: Mahesh

Bose




The

Calcutta-based petro giant had taken on an ambitious, almost
impossible challenge of implementing an ERP across its country-wide
network of 10,000 offices and dealers in a short span of three

months. That was half the challenge. The other half was that till

now nobody in India had attempted to move completely to a

browser-based interface, across such a large number of nodes, with

limited bandwidth connectivity. And there was only one month left

now.





Bose reflected
on how the decision had been thrust on him.

The US-based global

giant, Gobil had decided to move into India and deploy a
fully-automated network within 12 months. Navbharat had to automate

in a record time or face oblivion. "Get us a solution that will

bring us on equal footing with Gobil. And you got three months to do

that", the management had demanded.





Bose sweated as
he reflected on what all could go wrong with no margin of time for

recovery. The RDBMS and ourBAP.com applications were still being

configured on the 100 NT server-cluster farm with load balancing

still being optimized. But he was confident.




His pilot of 100
nodes, well dispersed across the country, using the Citrix ICA

software had worked flawlessly. The 386, 486, PII and PIII systems

across India all had similar access and response times as the

cluster of 100 NT Terminal Servers at Calcutta. Only, instead of 100

clients he was scaling to 10,000.




Thirty days
later, all 10,000 clients accessed ourBAP.com flawlessly and without

a network glitch. Navbharat had automated and reengineered before

Gobil was halfway through its India plans. A press release by Gobil

15 days later announced that it was postponing its India plans due

to weak demand levels.




2. Year: 2001.


Organization: The home.

Type of organization: Medium-income

dwelling unit for family of four.
Location: Calcutta, India.


Application: 10th class arithmetic.

Project Champion: Mahesh

Bose.




Mahesh Bose was

not very happy. His 14-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter were
doing well in academics in their school. The school had made it
compulsory for all students to carry their own computing devices and

he had just purchased SmallPalms for them two years back. The

SmallPalm was good for the 8th and the 9th class, but now it could

not understand his son's 10th class Calculus. "What the hell, I will

have to keep buying one of these every year now," he thought grimly,

"Unless, I find another way."





His portable had
a wireless attachment. The Citrix ICA software on his portable

allowed him to run any application from the service provider,

including access to the internet. He thought to himself, "Suppose I

fix one of those attachments on the SmallPalm and put the Calculus

application on the service provider's server. Then I can keep

changing the application when my son reaches the 11th and 12th

class. I would not need to buy the MediumPalm and LargePalm

now".




So successful
was Bose's cost-saving idea that after being recognized as a role

model, the Parent Teachers Association protested to the management

of the school to make the same process convenient for all the

students. The school negotiated with an application service provider

and installed all the academic software on the server. The students

could now use any version of the Palm device to access applications

depending on which class they were in. The school added the

application access costs billed by the service provider to the

students' quarterly tuition bills. The cost of software access was

far cheaper than purchasing a new model of the Palm every year.






This is not
science fiction with a forward-looking window of a few years.

Neither are these forecasts made by technology consulting firms,

forecasting probable technology life cycles. This is the computing

paradigm of tomorrow, which has already started. The paradigm spells

'information appliances'.




On a more
practical note, at the Citrix iForum99 held in Orlando, Florida, Ed

Iacobucci, Chairman and Founder, Citrix systems, called it the start

of the age of digital independence. As he describes the paradigm,

"We are embarking on an age where an inflexible, complex and costly

technology industry that has catered to the 'digital elite' will

evolve to a new millenium industry that focuses on accessibility,

ubiquity and independence for all". Big words for a powerful but

simple meaning.




Client-server
computing has brought us till here, it's not going to get us much

further. From the vision of US-based International Data Corporation

(IDC), first there was the era of back office automation or

host-based computing associated with mainframes. This lasted from

the seventies to the eighties. Then came the era of front office

automation or client-server computing, which has extended into the

nineties. With the start of the next decade and the millenium, we

are faced with the advent of a new computing paradigm, the era of

automating the customer. The mainframe has given way to the PC and

the PC is now giving way to information appliances. The forecast

from IDC shows the sheer number of information appliances overtaking

PC shipments by mid 2000, with the growth rate of PC shipments

tapering off in subsequent years. As Iacobucci describes the huge

opportunity for the ubiquitous appliance, "There are a hundred more

people not connected to the internet than those connected to the

internet". But the 'elite' will continue to use the PC, now renamed

as the fat or thick PC, and piggybacking on the latent need for

ubiquitous information appliances in the enterprise is the rise of

the thin PC or thin client.




size=2>Server-based computing face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2>
Ten years ago, when

Ed Iacobucci was working on developing OS/2 at IBM and Microsoft, he
figured they had got it all wrong. He felt that client-server

computing was too limiting, restrictive and only going to add cost

to the enterprise PC. He proposed server-based computing which was

the middle path between host-based and client-server computing. But

nobody listened or understood what he had to say at that time.







Iacobucci
created Citrix Systems in 1989, now a Florida-based $300 million

software organization. In 1999, Forbes named Citrix Systems as

'America's most dynamic software company' and Fortune ranked them #5

in the list of fastest growing companies. Iacobucci himself has

since been lauded with the Ernst & Youn Entrepreneur of the Year

award.




So what was
Iacobucci's server-based application model all about-that took a

decade to get recognized. Today, with the fast pace of computing

technologies, every PC in an enterprise is outdated from the day it

lands. Moreover, the average number of PCs in an enterprise are only

moving upwards and getting more dispersed. This is making version

control, application deployment and maintenance, and network

optimization and support, a CIOs' nightmare. Add to that,

heterogeneity of technologies and the fact that applications are

becoming increasingly browser-based and you get a full blown

calamity management in the enterprise.




Citrix now has
two products to enable a server-based computing environment in the

enterprise. Both are based on Windows NT Terminal Server. WinFrame

supports Windows NT 3.x and MetaFrame supports Windows NT 4.x. As

Nabeel Youakim, MD, Asia Pacific, Citrix Systems, describes the two

products, "WinFrame is for those guys who have decided to wait for

Windows 2000 rather than upgrade to NT 4.x." Both WinFrame and

MetaFrame work in the same manner by creating a shell for running

Windows applications. But that still leaves the client high and dry

on the other side waiting for user downloads. Unlike the network

computing model, there are no application downloads to the client in

the Citrix server application environments. The last piece in the

jigsaw solution is the Citrix ICA (Independent Computing

Architecture) software. The ICA software has three

components-server, network and client software. The ICA software on

the server separates application logic from the user interface and

transports it over standard network protocols and popular network

connections. Therefore, while the NT application is running in the

WinFrame or MetaFrame shell, ICA is transporting only screen

updates, mouse clicks and keystrokes up and down the network. That

is a lot less taxing on the network than a complete or partial

application download is in the network computing model. The

bandwidth required to support an ICA client is, therefore, typically

about 10-20Kbps.

Have we got it right? You really don't need a

lightning PC anymore to support an Office 2000 application. But you
do need good servers and even server farms. The cost of maintaining

centralized applications on a server farm is much lower than on the

client server or traditional model of computing. According to

Youakim, "A one way processor can support upto 30

clients".





size=2>Thin client face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2>
The server-based

computing model from Citrix therefore advocates a small footprint
for the client in terms of processor and RAM with file retrievals

restricted to the server or network. A logical conclusion is that

286, 386 and 486 machines are also thin clients since they have a

relatively small footprint. And they can also be used to access

server-based applications since both WinFrame and MetaFrame support

early operating systems like DOS and Windows 3.x.





IDC describes a
thin client as any enterprise desktop technology that competes for

enterprise desktop real estate, primarily with PCs and traditional

terminals. In fact, IDC looks at thin clients as part of the

Terminal market. And Terminal devices have been around for some

time. The IDC Terminal taxonomy includes IBM 3270 terminals used

with mainframes and IBM 5250 terminals used with AS400 and the newer

System 3x mainframes. The IDC Terminal taxonomy also includes

ASCII/ANSI emulation terminals and enterprise thin

clients.




However, of
these four categories, the first three-IBM 3270, 5250 and

ASCII/ANSI-have been projected to be growing well below a negative

average growth of 10%, according to IDC. Only enterprise thin

clients show positive growth, a respectable 72%. Thin clients are

the preferred terminals of tomorrow with their share in the Terminal

market growing from 28% in 1998 to 94% in 2003. In 1998, thin

clients accounted for 689,000 units out of 1.5 million terminals

shipped. In 2003, thin clients will account for 6 million units out

of 6.3 million terminals shipped, according to IDC.

IDC also

admits that too much hair-splitting has been done in the enterprise
thin client product space, between Windows-based terminals and

Network computers. Windows-based terminals are shipped from OEM

partners of Citrix, like Wyse, Boundless and Neoware. Network

computers are shipped from OEM partners of the Java Virtual Machine,

like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, NCD/Tektronix and Sun.

In 1998,

Network computers accounted for 186,000 units and Windows-based
terminals accounted for 369,000 units. In 2003, Network computers

are expected to reach 1.3 million units at an average growth of 58%

and Windows-based terminals are expected to reach 2.4 million units

at an average growth of 81%. The Windows-based terminal is the

enterprise thin client of choice, according to IDC.






Are there any
significant differences between the Windows-based terminal or ICA

thin client and the Network computer or Java Virtual Machine (JVM)?

A clear statement that can be made is that they are not the same.

The ICA thin client is totally Windows NT-specific whereas the JVM

is server neutral. The ICA client does not download any part of the

application logic, whereas there are dynamic downloads for the JVM.

This results in a much smaller hardware and network footprint for

the ICA client in comparison to the JVM. The ICA client will not

need to be upgraded as frequently as the JVM. In the words of Mark

Templeton, President and CEO, Citrix Systems, "Independence was

always at the root of the ICA concept. ICA has been about the

freedom to overcome the complexities of computing." While the JVM

client, like the ICA client, was meant to be an alternative to the

expensive client server computing paradigm, it still has not rid

itself of lurking complexities.




size=2>The ASP business model face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2>
Server-based

computing has another interesting spin-off. Thin clients in this
model would not have any local applications installed or deployed.

All applications and user licenses would relate to the usage of

applications off the server. Also, as connectivity and ubiquity

increases, the possibility of these applications being used off a

server outside the enterprise increases. An application service

provider would, therefore, necessarily need to offer connectivity as

well as application access. The user would pay for software

depending on extent of application access and usage. The traditional

model of an enterprise purchasing software license is therefore void

in tomorrow's model of ubiquitous access, and gives way to a utility

type model of pay-as-you-use. The ASP business model, while sounding

logical and common sense is fraught with difficulties mostly related

to changing the manner of business for vendors and their channel

partners.





size=2>The Indian perspective face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2>
Within India, Citrix

solutions are marketed by Pune-based Datapro. There are a number of
enterprise users, who have tested the waters by implementing Citrix

solutions in one manner or the other. At Pune-based Thermax, Sudhir

Tandon, Divisional Manager, MIS, has implemented MetaFrame to run

Oracle, Lotus and Microsoft applications on his 386 and 486 PCs.

There are 35 licenses of ICA clients running off a Windows NT

Terminal Server. As Tandon describes it, "We saw a demonstration,

liked it and implemented it." However, Tandon is unable to extend

access of the ICA clients across the WAN since the leased line gives

unreliable performance. Adds Tandon, "Next on the agenda is to run

Baan off these clients."





At
Bangalore-based Silicon Automation Systems, Sunil Ghosal, Manager,

Systems Administration, has implemented the ICA client to replace

the X-windows Unix emulation. As Ghosal points out, "Silicon

Automation is primarily a Unix environment with some Microsoft

applications. The problem was to run these applications on the Sun

workstations." Now, with ICA clients on the Sun workstations,

Windows applications can be accessed whenever

necessary.




At New
Delhi-based HILTI, a construction consulting company, Ruchi Agarwal,

Manager MIS, is pilot testing the ICA client with Scala ERP

software. As Agarwal remarks, "We are satisfied with the performance

of running Scala from the ICA client." But so far, the pilot testing

has only extended across a single client.




At
Bangalore-based Infosys, all clients are running on Unix. That makes

access to Microsoft applications painful. Remarks Ilan Kumaran N,

Systems Engineeer, "We have about 40 ICA licenses for running

Microsoft applications from the single NT Server with Citrix

MetaFrame. But we seldom run more than 10-15 clients at a time,

since the response time becomes delayed after that."




While it appears
that Citrix WinFrame and MetaFrame have been tested in the Indian

enterprise with satisfactory results, the bogey is that the scale of

ICA or thin client deployment has been much too limited for the

cost-saving benefits of server-based computing to be realized. As

Pramod Nigam, Hindustan Lever, points out, "You need a large number

of these clients to be cost effective and with the poor

communication infrastructure, that is not very likely." Network

connectivity across the enterprise is a dampener in

India.




size=2>Looking ahead face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2>
In circumspect,

Citrix applications in a heterogeneous environment are giving
immediate dividends to Indian enterprises. But server-based

computing and the concept of total cost of applications implies a

move-over to thinner clients on a reasonably large scale. As long as

Indian enterprises are hesitant of taking and overcoming this step,

the local computing paradigm is not going to change. With global

enterprises getting ready to take advantage of the lower costs of

server-based computing and thin clients, will India Inc again get

left behind in yet another technology overstep?

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