Desktop Linux Case Studies

2005


Copyright 2004 OSDL, All rights reserved.
 Linux Business Desktop
Case Study: Linux Thin Client – A 12 Month
Review
Martin P. Echt
MD, PhD, FACC, CEO
Capital Cardiology Associates

In cooperation with LILLE Corp.

About Capital Cardiology Associates

Capital Cardiology Associates, PC provides a full

range of diagnostic, interventional, therapeutic and
preventive services in the treatment of cardiovascular
diseases to patients throughout the Capital Region
(upstate New York and Massachusetts).

• Over 40 Physicians, Surgeons & Providers

• 7 Offices and 7 Hospitals in New York and Mass.
• 200 employees
• 128,000 Patient Visits (office & hospitals)
• 92,000 Diagnostic Tests
• 6,000 Catheterizations & Interventions
• 800 Open Heart Surgeries
• 380,000 Services billed/ year
• $22,000,000 yearly revenue
 MIS Situation

• Internet based EMR by Lille Corp.

• DBase for diagnostic service reports (tests) and statistics (Oracle)
• Billing and Patient Data Collection (Medical Manager, UNIX based)
• Patient Services tracking (spreadsheets)
• Financial & Business Software (MASS 90, FRX)
• Analytical Software (Touchpoint)
• Payroll & Employee Time monitoring (KRONOS, ADP)
• Pacemaker monitoring Programs (PACEART)
• Cardiac Catherization and Procedure imaging Software
• Word & general Spreadsheets
• Physician & Employee Time Schedules
• Daily Hospital Rounds and Procedure Activity Lists
• Hospital Patient Data Access (Citrix)
• e-Mail
Challenges & Considerations

IT Challenges
• Aging IT network in need of upgrades
• Rapid network expansion due to business growth
• Needed 75 new desktops
• Needed to upgrade 75 existing desktops
• Needed new servers and routers

Key Business Considerations

• Easy & fast networking via broadband Internet where available
• Shared File Access Environment
• Low incremental Costs of Network Expansions
• Minimize remote onsite IT – Services
• Complete Integration of Key Business apps (Billing, Business records, EMR,
diagnostic tests, etc.)
• Low Virus/Worm Susceptibility
• Eliminate User Options and Preferences to increase Employee Productivity
• Long Term Control over Costs
Evaluating the Desktop

Desktop Needs
• Simple Key Business Applications (Billing, Charge Entries, Sales,
Inventory)
• e-Mail
• Internet Access
• Data Base
• Basic Word Processing, Spreadsheets with Internet Access
• Specialty Programs limited to Key Management Employees

Desktop Options
• Microsoft Upgrades and Expansion
• Linux Thick Client (PCs)
• Linux Thin Clients
Solution

Why we choose Linux thin clients

• Lower Hardware Costs
• Lower Installation and Configuration Costs
• Lower Maintenance and “Upgrade” Costs
• Lower “remote” Costs
• Lower Depreciation Costs
• Lower “Doodling” Costs (employee time wasters)
Affordability

Total Costs of Servers and Desktops

Thick Client MS Thick LINUX Thin LINUX
200
Cost Desktop $320,000 $280,000 $160,000
Cost Server $181,000 $185,000 $194,000
Gen. Busin mark up 20% 0.2 $100,200 $93,000 $70,800

TOTAL $601,200 $558,000 $424,800

Conv. Costs per Station $3,006 $2,790 $2,124

Annual Operating Costs

Yearly Operating Costs
200 Desktop costs $166,000 $132,667 $46,667
yearly server & labor costs $175,500 $166,000 $167,800
Gen. Busin mark up 20% 0.2 $68,300 $59,733 $42,893
TOTAL $409,800 $358,400 $257,360
Yearly Costs per DT $2,049 $1,792 $1,287

"Doodling Costs" $150,000 $75,000 $0

Yearly Costs per DT incl.
"Doodling" $2,799 $2,167 $1,287
Affordability

Thick Thin Client Comparison

Total Costs

$ 6,000
$ 5,000
$ 4,000
$ 3,000
$ 2,000
$ 1,000
$0
Initia l C o s ts pe r DT Ye a rly C o s ts pe r DT 1rs t ye a r Ins ta ll & M a int.
c o s ts
Thick MS Thick LN Thin LN
Linux Business Desktop
Solutions for the Enterprise
Mike DeNeffe
Sr. Director, Winterm Product Line
Wyse Technology
What is a thin client?

User Desktops Datacenter

Programs
display here.
•Linux
Servers

But store and

execute on servers •Unix
Servers

Display Protocol •Multi-User

X11, RDP, ICA Windows Server

Management Control •Management Software

Top 10 Thin Client Myths

• They’re just dumb terminals

• They have no power to run today’s applications
• They can not run latest browser or any browser
• They are task based: The can only run 1 session
or application at a time
• They can not print
• They died with Larry Ellisons NC
• SunRays are the only thin client today
• They are expensive to buy and maintain
• Nobody uses them
• There is no cost saving
Added Benefits of Wyse Linux Thin Clients

Powered by Wyse Linux V6

 Based on secure and reliable Linux 2.6.8
Stateless configuration
 Plug and Play installation
 No need to configure the client. Saves time and cost on installing the
client, especially in remote location
Free seating
 Instantly access person desktop from anywhere in the network. User
setting, such as application access and desktop settings are stored on the
server.
Local Mozilla browser
 Access corporate web based application or
 Access the internet with feature rich browser
Total Application Solutions
 No need for local applications
 All applications runs on central server
Linux Business Desktop
Optimizing Performance
Paul McCumber
Software Technical Marketing Engineer
AMD
 Thin Clients Powered by AMD

Commitment to the Thin Client Market

AMD provides low-power and high-performance processors
that meet the needs of the growing thin client space. We
have several generations of experience with this market and
continue to see Thin Clients as a real growth opportunity and
key market for AMD.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo and combinations thereof, Geode and GeodeLink are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names
used in this presentation are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Thin Client Reference Design Kit (TC RDK)

• AMD is helping to enable the Thin Client Market

– By delivering compact, low-power and high-performance systems

• AMD’s TC RDK looks at the total system solution

– System Performance
– System Power
– System Cost

• By developing a complete solution, AMD has gained insight into

the issues that confront Thin Client OEMs, ODMs, and the end
user
Desktop vs. Thin Client
Thin Clients have their own unique set of requirements.

Features Desktop Thin Client

PCs
Power Consumption

Form Factor

Reliability

High Performance

Long-term Availability

High Value Lower Value

 AMD Geode GX Processors

Features Customer Benefits

2W Typical Power Usage No heat sink typically required which
allows for smaller form factors

Patented High-Speed GeodeLink™ Up to 6GB/sec data movement

Internal Bus Architecture bandwidth which results in higher
overall system performance at a lower
MHz*

Highly integrated design (memory Improves performance and lowers

controller and high-performance 2D overall size, power, and system cost
graphics engine)

Long-term manufacturing and support Long-term supply for thin client

customers

*The AMD Geode GX [email protected] processor operates at 400MHz. Model numbers reflect performance as described here:
http://www.amd.com/connectivitysolutions/geodegxbenchmark.
 AMD Geode™ GX Low Power x86 Thin
Client Architecture

5.3”

4.8”

*The AMD Geode GX [email protected] processor operates at 400MHz. Model numbers reflect performance as described here:
http://www.amd.com/connectivitysolutions/geodegxbenchmark.
AMD Value Add

AMD is committed to providing not just drivers but

a complete software solution that optimizes the
performance of our parts.

AMD continues to be committed to providing

devices, software, partnerships, and reference
designs to enhance our customers product quality,
features, and time to market.
Anaconda Sports
New York-based Anaconda Sports, the largest
retailer of amateur league sports and school
district athletic equipment in the United States,
wanted to build a cost-effective e-commerce
Website and turned to Linux as a reliable,
scalable and secure platform. Anaconda relies
on IBM applications, middleware and Intel
architecture servers running Red Hat
Enterprise Linux.

ROI: Sales up 20 percent

Boscov's Department Store
The largest family-owned retailer in the United States,
Boscov’s Department Store operates more than 40
stores in five states adding two or three stores a year.
But its online Web e-commerce site is growing even
faster, doubling in transactions annually. To slash the
escalating software and systems administration costs
required to run its expanding datacenter of standalone
servers that power the Web site, Boscov’s
consolidated everything onto a single IBM mainframe
server running Novell SUSE Linux.

ROI: Software and systems administration savings in the

first three years expected to exceed $1 million.
Burlington Coat Factory
 For several years now, Burlington Coat factory
has been running its enterprise on 5,000 Linux-
based point of sale systems at more than 340
stores in 42 states nationwide. The next step was
replacing its legacy large server systems.
Recently Burlington turned to Novell SUSE Linux
running on more than 2,000 clustered Intel
architecture servers from IBM with a migration of
two key applications in less than two weeks.

ROI: Hardware capital expenditure savings of tenfold

compared to legacy UNIX environment.
GLOBUS
A leading European retailer with 20,000 employees at
more than 90 locations, GLOBUS ran its business with
a custom-developed ERP application on a proprietary
UNIX system with a server based in each store. To cut
both software and hardware expenditures, GLOBUS
began to move to Intel architecture servers from Bull
running Novell SUSE Linux, with two inexpensive
servers replacing the single, expensive, proprietary
server at each store.

ROI: Stores close each night 25 percent faster, with

most of the ERP system now running on Linux, at
much lower costs than before.
Mercadona
With nearly 900 stores around the country,
Mercadona is Spain’s leading supermarket
chain. Mercadona turned to Linux for a secure,
flexible and cost-effective platform to run its
business – both at individual stores as well as
at the corporate central offices. Currently the
chain is in the middle of a five-year deployment
of more than 1,000 Intel architecture servers
as well as 10,000 desktop/point of sale
terminals, all running Red Hat Enterprise
Linux.
 Retail Ventures, Inc.
Retail Ventures, Inc. (RVI) is a publicly-traded holding company for three major retail
brands: DSW Shoe Warehouse, one of the largest shoe retailers in the U.S. with
184 stores; Filene’s Basement, the country’s oldest off-price store selling brand-
name and designer fashions to men and women at 27 stores nationwide; and
Value City Department Stores, an off-price department store chain with 114 stores
in more than 30 markets. RVI turned to a data protection solution from BakBone
Software running on Novell SUSE Linux to safeguard 14 TB of mission-critical
data. The solution integrates across a mixed platform environment comprising
Novell SUSE Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Sun
Solaris servers. As a result, RVI has accelerated its data backups while
dramatically reducing the time and effort to restore valuable financial, ERP,
merchandising, warehousing and other retail information.

ROI: The time and effort to restore critical files has been reduced from more than five
hours to less than 10 minutes at 60 percent the cost of competing solutions with
the combination of BakBone and FalconStor’s VTL products.