Jonas Wiman
IT manager, City of Motala 

The City of Motala had thought about introducing Server-Based Computing long before they started testing ThinLinc. It was mainly the schools who were interested in such a solution, and it's also the schools who will be the first to migrate to ThinLinc.

An investigation which was made for the municipality recommends Server-Based Computing solutions, but the solutions which have been available before haven't been very interesting. Jonas says:

- It's mainly three things that makes ThinLinc stand out from the other solutions, and that's the price, the security and the Linux desktop.

Price an important issue

The price is an important issue for the local authorities in general today. With ThinLinc, the municipality will save a lot of money, according to Jonas. 

- Since ThinLinc runs on Linux it's easier to introduce Open Source software in the organization. As an example, the schools will save something like four hundred thousand SEK a year on the Office package alone.

Savings

In addition there are savings in the form of being able to buy computers without Windows, which saves about a thousand SEK per computer, and instead of buying expensive ordinary computers it's possible to purchase thin clients, which are less desirable for thieves. Computer thefts are a major problem for the schools.

- Another thing is that we will now be able to take out old computers from storage and make them into thin clients. That way we'll get more computers for the schools, which benefits the students, says Jonas and continues:

- Today the eleven thousand students and teachers share twelve hundred PCs, but that's a number we reckon will increase quickly thanks to this.

A TCO/ROI report made during the autumn of 2006 by the third-party consulting company RedBridge shows that the annual savings gained by running ThinLinc are about 3 500 000 SEK. Read the full report.

More benefits

Other benefits from introducing ThinLinc in the schools is that they will get a more stable system with fewer interruptions which leads to higher quality of the education. The costs for administration will also decrease since the system will be easier to administrate and most of the administration will take place centrally.

Schools and care

Today we have over 900

concurrent users divided in 2 upper secondary school, 19 nine-year compulsory school, 1 education center and 

Administration in the City of Motala.

We also lets all the students and teachers to log on to the system from home, through ThinLinc.

Jonas also sees a possibility to introduce ThinLinc in the care for the elderly, for instance by outfitting nursing homes with thin clients to enable the personnel to access journals and report time in a secure way.