Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018.  Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by Joseph Anderson, Content Creator and Social Media Specialist at Stratodesk

Thin Client Manufacturers will feel the swell caused by the Raspberry Pi

The VDI landscape is more or less in a constant state of flux. From lowering PC costs to new technology that makes thin clients more accessible to the enterprise market, it can be hard to decode its future.

There are, however,  a few things that are likely to change. And those things have been a long time in coming. Customers have evolved beyond traditional thin clients. They no longer want to pay manufacturer's asking price, and they expect us, the innovators, to provide them with a better solution.

This has created the need for a newer and better way to approach Thin Clients, and is part of a seismic shift happening in the Thin Client enterprise market. Some big players will begin to feel that shift, and some smaller players will ignore it.

But all will have to answer to it eventually.

Raspberry Pi - a Cataclysm for Change

Using the Raspberry Pi in the VDI isn't a new idea. However, it wasn't considered a viable option to replace high quality Thin Clients in the past. A host of issues presented themselves as potential barriers to creating an enterprise grade, VDI solution around the Raspberry Pi.

Fast forward a few years, however, and Citrix has announced their HDX Ready Pi for the enterprise market. The Raspberry Pi can in fact serve all the functions you would expect from a traditional Thin Client, at a fraction of the cost.

For this reason, the Raspberry Pi is essentially going to do to the Thin Client space what Uber did to the taxi cab companies. By introducing a cheaper, more logical solution, the Raspberry Pi will make bloated Thin Client companies obsolete.

In a very real way, the Raspberry Pi will disrupt the Thin Client space.

How Raspberry Pi sets a new industry trend for 2018

Our prediction is this - that the second tier thin client manufacturers will feel the shift that the Raspberry Pi has made in 2018. They will flounder for a bit, try different tactics to overcome this change. But ultimately, they simply won't be able to ride the wave of change that the Raspberry Pi has made. For these companies, this will be a game changer.

These companies are simply not built to be software or Raspberry Pi manufacturers. Their business revolves around creating high priced hardware, and the margins are too thin for them to reduce the price of their thin clients any further. Only nimble and efficient companies will be able to produce Raspberry Pis as an alternative to Thin Clients, and still make a profit. It is an entire paradigm shift.

On the contrary

Still, there are detractors from the belief that the Raspberry Pi has what it takes to change the market of Thin Client computing. Some of these detractors point to the inability of the Raspberry Pi to do dual screen monitoring, and say that the product is not ready for the enterprise market.

This again, however, could be considered a symptom of denial. Thanks to Stratodesk's partnership with Citrix, ViewSonic, and NComputing we were actually able to create a Raspberry Pi based thin client that is capable of dual monitor, and able to stream high graphics.

And we are very excited about this development, perhaps above and beyond anything else that we have worked on this year.

Again, however, others might point to the added costs of using the Raspberry Pi as an enterprise grade, Thin Client solution, citing that in addition to the Raspberry Pi, you will also need to purchase management software  and install an OS on top of that.

Raspberry Pi - the enterprise grade Thin Client Solution

Thanks to Stratodesk, however, our Raspberry Pi comes equipped with not only the NoTouch OS (the world's easiest to use Thin Client OS), but also has NoTouch Center, the seamless and easy to use, enterprise grade management system, embedded into it. Not to mention the Virtual Appliance that makes installing and booting thousands of pcs a synch.

What's more, our Raspberry Pi also comes equipped with Imprivata Single Sign On, making it ready for the healthcare, enterprise market as well.

Stratodesk has been up to big things this year, and you can expect even bigger and newer releases to come -so stay in touch!

What is your take on it? Will the Raspberry Pi effectively disrupt the Thin Client market?

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About the Author

Joseph Anderson is a Writer and Marketing Strategist. He works with tech startups to help them spread their vision to the world, and is currently working on a fiction novel in his free time.