Citrix still cheaper than Microsoft's Terminal Server

Citrix Winframe users should avoid migrating to Microsoft's thin-client architecture for as long as they can, because the move to Windows NT Terminal Server is expensive and probably unnecessary.

Citrix Winframe users should avoid migrating to Microsoft's thin-client architecture for as long as they can, because the move to Windows NT Terminal Server is expensive and probably unnecessary.

Organisations using the Winframe thin-client server package on Windows NT 3.5.1 should sit tight and resist the rush to migrate to Terminal Server and Citrix Metaframe, warned Gartner Group networking analyst Cherry-Rose Anderson. Winframe allows low-power clients to run Microsoft and other applications on servers rather than desktops.

"Windows NT 3.5.1 is viable until the end of 2001 at the minimum, and Citrix [Winframe] has a pretty nice price structure. Most applications don't require NT 4, most will work on NT 3.5.1," Anderson told the Gartner Group Symposium in Cannes last week.

At least 80 per cent of enterprises moving to Terminal Server will pay "between two and 10 times the amount for Terminal Server compared with Winframe," she warned.

Gartner says that Windows 2000 won't be stable enough for large organisations to deploy until 2001 at the earliest, and the system will be less reliable than NT until the beginning of 2002.

"Most features that Windows 2000 gives you are already available as third-party additions. You don't need to migrate to Windows 2000 to get the functions you're looking for," said Anderson.

Microsoft is touting Win2000's increased manageability as a reason to upgrade from NT 3.5.1 and NT4. But Gartner warned that Windows-based networks using good third-party tools may even raise their costs by migrating to Win2000.