InformationWeek

June 23, 1999

Perspective:
FedEx Thinks Thin

The pioneer of overnight-mail delivery service gives thin-client computing its stamp of approval, especially at locations subject to harsh conditions

By Robert Carter

hin clients first appeared two years ago as an alternative to business PCs. The market is still in its infancy, but hundreds of companies are already finding that thin clients are ideal within some types of computing environments. For example, thin clients can be a good choice for harsh industrial areas, because they are less bulky than PCs and contain fewer moving parts.

One pioneer of thin-client computing, Federal Express, has installed 6,000 Windows terminals and plans to deploy up to 40,000 units within the next few years.

Senior editor Mary Hayes recently spoke with Robert Carter, chief technology officer of FedEx parent company FDX Corp., about the status of the deployment.

InformationWeek: Why did FedEx adopt thin-client computing?

Carter: We are moving computing resources away from desktops and toward networked solutions that allow for employee mobility. We chose Windows terminals, because they provide the FedEx workforce with an environment that it's familiar with. But they also provide our workers with the mobility they had in the dumb terminal days before FedEx used PCs, when employees could walk up to any device at any facility and get access to their information.

InformationWeek: Where are you replacing PCs with Windows terminals?

Carter: In FedEx airport ramps, hubs, and city stations, which can be fairly harsh work environments. With all of the packages, trucks, activity, airplanes, and dust, those are not particularly great places for PCs. In these environments, Windows terminals have been quite successful.

InformationWeek: Where will PCs remain?

Carter: We have tens of thousands of PCs and laptops still in use for various professional functions, and we will continue to use them in many cases. For example, users who work on a lot of graphics or multimedia applications are better served by PCs.

Our primary focus is on server-based computing, whether someone is sitting at a PC or a Windows terminal, or using a PDA [personal digital assistant]. In each situation, users will touch servers for information much more frequently. And most of that information will be on the corporate intranet.

InformationWeek: How does the Internet play into your server-based computing strategy?

Carter: All of the applications we're delivering and building for the future are based on an Internet computing model of IP connectivity. This environment comes across to the user as a Microsoft desktop, with browser capabilities taking center stage.

InformationWeek: How did you communicate the change to employees who had their PCs replaced with thin clients?

Carter: We're delivering tools for thin clients, such as Microsoft Office, which employees are familiar with or can be easily trained on. So we've taken a path of least resistance, by delivering tools that people are comfortable with.

We've also talked a lot about the advantages of this environment: It frees you from the constraints of a specific device; the bookmarks for your browser are there when you log on at any system; entries are there that you made in your personal dictionary to recognize the acronyms and names of people that appear in your correspondence; your mailbox, in a modern, distributed E-mail fashion, is there.

InformationWeek: Did anything unanticipated occur during the deployment?

Carter: I had not anticipated that it would run as well as it does over the wide area network. Our initial implementations involved local servers. But local servers in a world as broad as ours are costly and difficult to administer. We've consolidated our server farms into the data center, and we now have an IP-based, frame relay network that provides T1 capacity to every FedEx facility. Thin clients access data over the WAN, and we've been pleasantly surprised by how well that works.

InformationWeek: What changes were required in your computing environment to support thin clients?

Carter: We've upgraded our networks. However, bandwidth is critically important in an Internet computing model, which involves distribution of advanced applications. So we would have expanded bandwidth even if we had not adopted thin clients.

Has some of the computing horsepower moved from desktops to servers? Yes. But it's easier to upgrade and manage servers, which exist in a ratio of one to 100 clients. If I had to upgrade 40,000 clients every two years, I'd be continuously upgrading.

We also benefit from a more highly available environment, because data is now centralized in a disaster-recovery- oriented area. We don't worry about someone losing data on a PC hard drive in a server-centric environment.

InformationWeek: What advice would you give to companies interested in deploying thin-client computing?

Carter: Companies need to carve out time to assess the technology. They need to understand all of its strengths and weaknesses, and how it would work in their particular environments.

InformationWeek: How would you rate the success of your thin-client deployment?

Carter: In the beginning, we had to sell this technology to users. Now, there are so many requests for it by various operations that it's become difficult to keep up with those implementations.

I think that's an excellent sign.