JISC

The project aims at allowing for Office 97 services to our major student open access Windows 3.1 cluster which had 220 seats. The aim was to allow 50 simultaneous users of Office 97.

Background

Within Manchester Computing at the University of Manchester, we became interested in the potential uses of thin client technology and especially multi-user NT server products based on Citrix Winframe early in 1997.

We felt that the thin client approach could potentially help to resolve a number of issues where conventional networked PC configurations were either unable to address reliably or were requiring considerable support effort.

We decided that a series of small scale pilot studies should be carried out and these covered a wide spectrum of our activities. Once we were familiar with the basic technology, we took the view that we wished to test the ability of the solution to support relatively large numbers of users in a production environment. A number of pilot projects were considered which would enable the scalability to be tested.

After consideration of the options, the pilot project selected was to provide, during the Summer of 1997, Office 97 services to our major student open access Windows 3.1 cluster which had 220 seats. The aim was to allow 50 simultaneous users of Office 97.

We also promoted the use of the technology in association with our colleagues at the University of Bristol through seminars and demonstration facilities.

We have set up a web site  which provides more technical details of the thin client services which we provide, access to the demonstration facilities, and contact details for further information on our thin client projects.

Within Manchester we have now adopted Thin Client services for a variety of areas including many of those considered for our initial projects.  In summary, the main services we have provided comprise:

• Office 97 service for the student open access cluster
• Dialup access to Pegasus mail accessible via a web interface
• Web based thin client access to the Library Electronic Media Services (Rybase)
• Web based thin client access to Technical Indexes
• Office applications served to Unix Workstation/X station users within Manchester Computing and selected departments
• Small Microsoft Terminal Server cluster for the Staff Development Unit
• Trial services and demonstration services for departments of the University and external organisations.