Wyse partnering with IBM, updating OSs

Despite the economy, the quarter ending with December was one of the best for thin client sales for Wyse Technologies, according to Wyse Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Jeff McNaught. The company had two announcements Tuesday for new ventures, a partnership with IBM and a new line of thin clients based on Windows Embedded Standard, both of which should produce new products available by April.

Wyse's partnership with IBM is both for joint sales and joint development of new solutions. The first of these new solutions is a new virtualization service product called Full Stream Client (FSC). FSC is targeted at companies that can't afford the data center hardware needed for traditional thin client computing. It uses a more sophisticated version of the OS and application streaming model to get software to thin clients, where most of the processing is done. McNaught said thin clients have become more powerful in the last few years so they could handle voice and video, and by using this processing power the computing burden is distributed while still allowing for the ease of management of thin clients.

The other advancement at Wyse is a movement toward Windows Embedded Standard as the OS, replacing Windows XP Embedded. Embedded Standard includes all the features of XP Embedded, including the ability to run 32-bit Windows software. Devices with Embedded standard will also be able to handle compatible with Microsoft Silverlight, .NET Framework 3.5, and Windows Media Player 11. Devices with Embedded Standard are expected to cost the same as devices with the previous version.

For more about Wyse, visit the company's site.

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