How Much Will a Zero-Client Network Save You?

Lately we have felt a lot of empathy for Galileo, the astronomer who deduced that, contrary to popular belief, the sun and not the Earth was the center of our solar system.

OK, so maybe your optimal network infrastructure is not quite on the same level. And maybe the church is not sending henchmen to lock us up. But other than that, we know just how he must have felt.

Zero-client infrastructures totally re-imagine your IT setup, and, honestly, they make so much more sense than the traditional desktop/workstation configuration you know and love. In recent weeks, we have blogged about Zero-clients versus Thin Clients. We have also talked about some of the key benefits of Zero Clients and how the new setup is naturally superior, in terms of energy savings, security, administration and flexibility.

Before astronomers accepted the solar-centric view as a way of modeling our solar system, their observations of the Universe were extremely confusing. They probably puzzled over these seeming “errors” for most of their work lives. So much time and thought was lost until they found a better way.

The Price Difference between a Repurposed PC Purchase and Zero Clients

Zero-client infrastructures benefit from reduced maintenance and improved functionality, and many of the benefits cannot be captured in pure numbers. However, there is an online calculator you can use to compute your overall financial savings over the next 3 years, which should be enough reason for anybody.

The example the site uses is pretty ideal, and it does not represent our typical clients, so we filled out our own chart for our average mid-sized business customer. Here is what the data tells us:

The calculator figures $53,113 in savings over 3 years. And if you look at the fine print at the bottom right, you will see that 4+ years of use remain to the zero-client architecture. Repurposing your workstations would not only cost more over this 3-year timeframe, it would require another substantial investment far before your zero-client network!

Read our blog next week to see how we can ease the transition for you.