Given today's application-oriented IT focus, it comes as no surprise that the most common approach revolves around 32-bit Windows, today's chief client-application environment. By slicing the client/server application architecture at the presentation layer--about as thin a client as one can hope to engineer--Citrix established early dominance in this market. Citrix has maintained its position through product enhancements that respond to IT managers' needs and by building a channel of integrators who sell the virtues of thin-client computing. Citrix's WinFrame product turned Windows NT 3.5 into a multiuser application-server platform, a Windows time-sharing environment able to deliver applications to any device smart enough to support the relatively light ICA (Independent Computer Architecture) protocol.

This approach greatly simplifies desktop management by centralizing virtually all administrative tasks on an NT server or server farm. Furthermore, its low-overhead communications protocol, compression, and client-caching capabilities let organizations deploy applications across relatively slow wide area connections. This solves one of the most significant problems associated with deployment of enterprise client/server applications, including ERP (enterprise resource planning) environments. It also makes it much easier to provide location-independent access to key applications and opens the door to the new form of outsourcing offered by application service providers (see "ASPs Emerge for Application Outsourcing," page 62).

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It took some time, but after the infighting between product groups and a much-publicized licensing dispute with Citrix, Microsoft finally arrived at the thin-client party. Windows NT Terminal Server Edition (TSE) is a significant, albeit functionally limited, server offering built upon code licensed to Microsoft by Citrix. The benefit of Microsoft's entry into the market is largely symbolic; the lack of critical functionality, including server load-balancing, local printer and local comm port redirection capability condemns it to niche applications. Most large IT shops must deploy Citrix's MetaFrame on top of TSE. At a suggested retail price of $4,995 for a 15-concurrent-user server license, MetaFrame considerably increases the overall cost of thin-client deployment.

Although neither the release date nor the adoption rate of Windows 2000 is easy to predict, it is certain that Microsoft will have a more complete remote-presentation offering before long, as it will have TSE services integrated into every copy of Windows 2000 (see "Windows 2000 Promises More Feature-Rich TSE," page 60). That spells potential trouble for Citrix if it can't find new areas in which to add value, or new business opportunities that leverage its expertise and strong distribution and support infrastructure.

After staking out its turf on the back end, Microsoft turned to the client, enhancing its Windows CE, which was designed for the PDA market, and touting it as a ROM-bootable thin-client OS for Windows terminals. Like TSE, it is a half-hearted effort. CE is hardly an ideal thin-client OS, but as with many Microsoft products, it is good enough to make the industry reluctant to bet on alternatives. Compared with the previous generation of thin-client devices, many of which were built on top of DOS or crippled Unix derivatives, CE definitely represents a step forward.

Microsoft's development of both sides of the remote-presentation thin-client environment puts it in a similar technological position to that of Unix vendors in the mid-'80s with the X-Windows system. The difference is that Microsoft owns the application market that never emerged for X, and it's still today's safe choice for IT professionals who have to limit their risk-taking.

As noted earlier, most large sites that deploy TSE also install Citrix's MetaFrame to take advantage of features absent in TSE. Some sites also need ICA's heterogeneous client support or the other advanced management features that make MetaFrame so appealing. Based on our hands-on experience with these products in our labs, we feel that coupling MetaFrame with TSE makes sense for most midsize and large organizations in spite of the high price. TSE alone doesn't cut it.