Wyse is taking the thin-client, zero-client market seriously. The company offers many different solutions, ranging from reduced-client PCs for Citrix-based solutions to thin clients with processing power and operating systems ready to run hosted applications, to their latest entries in to the field—zero clients designed for VDI.

Wyse offers two desktop devices, the V00L and the V00LE. The V00L features an 800MHz Via processor, while the V00LE sports a 1200MHz Via Processor. Other than that, it is difficult to distinguish the two products from each other.

The real power behind Wyse’s offering comes from the company’s provisioning and management software, Wyse WSM. Wyse WSM is designed to deliver the OS and applications to zero clients in real time over standard LANs and WANs, including Windows 2000, Windows XP Embedded and Windows XP Professional. Wyse users need Wyse Device Manager, which is a software management suite used to manage zero clients (and thin clients) across a workgroup or enterprise.

Those looking to deliver robust zero-client solutions will need Wyse TCX, a group of software extensions that brings multimedia and rich PC support to zero clients. The combination of those three software components brings support for VMware’s VDM 2.0 connection-brokering functions, which creates a fully supported VMware VDI deployment.

In theory, all of this works together to create a managed zero-client environment, but Wyse makes it anything but easy. Wyse is hampered by too many components, integration requirements and confusing deployment information. Much of that could be solved by the company creating "bundles" that are geared toward deploying a zero-client solution. The mix-and-match approach, with additional items needed for multimedia support, makes for a solution that is both hard to sell and hard to deploy. Add to that the limited and outdated information offered on Wyse’s Website, and the company makes it difficult to conceptualize a zero-client solution and even more difficult to figure out pricing, ROI, and many other factors channel partners need to consider.

Those looking to go the Wyse zero-client route will need the backroom infrastructure to support the clients, including VMware’s ESX server, associated servers (or blades) and network backbone. Worth noting is that VMware is bundling Wyse TCX software with ESX server, which helps to reduce overall deployment costs.