The cost of the Citrix licences is offset by many other advantages: Central administration of TC and PC desktops and software. We can keep using old computers long after anyone else has disposed of them and they run at near server speed even on a 233 pentium box.(The DfES still haven't cottoned on to this one and Becta are still assessing our system based upon a standard PC model. We also have another piece of software from Precedence technologies in Cambridge called ThinIT which is a cut down Unix which can be put onto any PC and run the Citrix client over the top. Every machine in the school has exactly the same desktop. No extra costs for lock down of desktops No WinXP licences except on specialist PCs, eg. music, video Web based administration from anywhere in the school of all servers. If we pay subscription advantage we get a free upgrade of the Citrix operating system every time it is changed which is worth considerably more than the tiny fee we pay. TCO is considerably lower than with a PC system over a 5 year period and over the 8 years we have now been on the Citrix system we have saved massive amounts of money both in initial and maintenance costs and have been blessed with a network which is available most years for over 99% of the time. We even run the free Pro Desktop 3D CAD software over the system with no limitations. Our technician has worked on other systems but she would not go back to a PC only system now.
On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 07:07, G.Harris wrote:
The rest of our system is a mix of Windows PCs, Linux terminals, Unix PCs and even some Mac and old Acorn machines all running Citrix Metaframe centrally to deliver a mixture of software from the Microsoft and Open Source communities.
As a matter of interest, what did your Citrix licenses cost per seat? The thing that has always put me off with Citrix is the cost of the license which was about £130 a seat last time I looked but reducing with volume.
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