Hydra heads for trouble

Microsoft won't say whether thin clients will be hit by extra licensing charges

Microsoft has refused to confirm US reports that it will slap a premium price tag on Hydra, its forthcoming thin client software, Time Stammers.

Despite promising that its Windows NT-based package for distributing application processing between servers and clients will ship before July, the software giant is remaining tight-lipped about the likely prices.

Hydra ? officially named Windows Terminal Server ? will ship free with NT Server, but client machines will require licences to access it.

One US thin-client manufacturer told Computing that Microsoft intends to charge the same for Hydra client licences as for NT Workstation ? which costs #263, compared to just #160 for the forthcoming Windows 98 system.

John Frederiksen, US group product manager for Microsoft, said: ?People have assumed those licences will cost the same as NT client licences. That?s because Windows Terminal Server delivers the same interface as NT 4.0, and NT is becoming the corporate standard desktop. But we haven?t announced any prices yet.?

Frederiksen insisted that customers will pay the same to use Hydra as they do currently when they run for conventional network architectures. Unlike Citrix ? from which it licensed the core code for Hydra ? Microsoft will not offer concurrent client licences.

Such licences could be shared by several users providing they did not all try to access the system at the same time.

Frederiksen admitted that US resellers wanted concurrent licensing for Hydra because ?it?s easier for them to sell, as customers don?t have to track them?. But he added: ?We have never offered concurrent licences. The problem with them is that they encourage people to share licences and access the technology less.?