We have an office with around 100 clients. We have a piece of software which is used in our factory. At present we have a server which hosts the software. In the factory there are multiple PCs installed which the user opens an internet page and connects to the software.
There doesn't seem much point installing full PCs in the factory when all they are used for is this piece of software.
We have around 10 of these PC's and I am looking at maybe hosting a TS enviroment or a Citrix farm.
Which would be the better solution - financially and ease of use?
Citrix presentation server works on top of windows server Terminal services. so if you choose to use citrix, you would need both terminal server client access licenses as well as citrix licenses which is going to increase the cost. but depends upon what clients would be accessing the server / application. ICA protocal by citix works on a wide variety of clients but the windows RDP protocal for TS access is only limited to Microsoft clients ..
The ICA protocol is also allot thinner than RDP so it would depend on the connections into this room. Personally if you're going for thin clients, and publishing full desktop I see no reason why you can't just use Terminal Services. If you want to publish just the application, then you're down the citrix route. Load balancing in Citrix is also much nicer.
Honestly for such small deployment, Citrix makes no sense. Although ICA is leaner than RDP, it is NOT for that much. Windows Server 2008 uses an improved RDP implementation (6.1) and is very close to ICA and in certain cases, better. To take care of the client side, if you do not want a full OS on them simply get something like the 2X ThinClient Server PXES Edition (free). Check http://www.2x.com for more information. Regarding Citrix please read this article I wrote: http://www.msterminalservices.org/articles/Citrix-Not-Citrix.html
Key thing is to have someone knowledgeable to help you with TS/Citrix. Many projects go wrong with TS/Citrix because people think it is simple to do it and at the end it is not that simple. And then they blame TS/Citrix... Well you know where to find me. :-)
