Microsoft fails to kill WinFrame

UK financial services companies decide against new Windows Terminal Server

TWO UK financial services companies are snubbing Microsoft's Windows Terminal Server (WTS) in favour of basing thin-client projects on Citrix's WinFrame 1.7 package, writes Gavin Clarke.

Aon Risk Services, a division of insurance giant Aon Group, will provide online access to a risk analysis database for up to 30 of its major worldwide corporate customers using WinFrame 1.7.

Invoice financing company Kellock, part of the Bank of Scotland Group, is expected to use WinFrame 1.7 to provide online access to accounts held by more than 700 small and medium-sized business customers.

WTS, launched by Microsoft last week, allows users to run applications almost entirely on servers rather than clients, enabling them to use low-specification thin-client PCs for power-hungry applications. The package is based on code developed by Citrix for its WinFrame product.

Microsoft said last week it expected existing WinFrame 1.7 users to migrate to WTS.

The decision by both companies to use WinFrame bucks the apparent trend to build thin client architecture using the Java development environment.

Lee Kingshott, Kellock's director of IT, said the cost of hiring new engineers with Java skills had deterred him adopting the language. 'If the expense wasn't in the equation, we'd go Java,' he said.

Aon and Kellock used WinFrame 1.7 in-house to provide thin client access to Windows applications and databases.

WinFrame 1.7 uses Citrix's ICA protocol to send nothing but a screen refresh to the client, so that processing is performed on the server and the application's user interface doesn't have to be re-written in Java.