Inbox: Thin clients dealt Defra death blow?

The weekly Inbox column collects the best and most thought-provoking of the reader comments silicon.com receives each week.
Defra gave thin clients short shrift this week, revealing it had decided against deploying the green tech. Readers reached for their keyboard in droves, with most arguing the Whitehall department was much too hasty in its dismissal.

The Naked CIO also pushed some buttons again this week, with a column on the need for non-IT workers to stick to their day job and let the tech guy do his.

Last but not least - is putting all your software in the cloud nothing but folly? Readers have their say.

Don't forget to post your own response to any of these stories or comments by clicking here.

Thin clients find slim pickings at Defra
One of Whitehall's largest departments has rejected thin client technology - less than a year after it was identified as a way of greening government IT.

PCs just as hungry
Fragmented thinking. Most servers are grossly under-utilised and over-cooled. Most PCs are as watt hungry as servers.

Heat from servers could be could be displaced to office heating in the winter and water heating in the summer.

It's not obvious that homeworking always brings green benefits. If it means we heat our homes during the working day and heat our increasingly empty offices at the same time. A whole systems study is called for.
Patrick Newman, Stevenage

Scared of the unknown
This is just wrong - a server can be made far more efficient. How about the cooling required in the offices for all of the desktop machines?

Sounds like a cop out - why couldn't they just say that everyone wants a laptop and no one likes the idea of something "new".
Anonymous, London

Thin clients dealt a blow
This is unbelievable. The savings from moving to thin clients are real in money and in environmental terms. Given that Defra has 11,500 people working remotely, the flexibility and speed of response of these people would have been drastically improved. It is difficult to understand the decision on economic, environmental and business levels. It is also likely to deal the thin client computing industry a severe blow in this difficult economic climate.
TP, London

"Green is good but cash still underlines most decisions"
With so many homeworkers it may have cost Defra lots more in electricity bills to provide hosted virtual machines for all, maybe it's better to let the homeworkers pay for the electricity and office space etc?

Green is good but cash still underlines most decisions.
Stuart Fawcett, London

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Naked CIO: Tech is my job, not your hobby
Within modern businesses, technology is the only discipline that is both a profession and a hobby - and it's a contradiction that hurts the reputation of the IT organisation.

It's IT's job to help them do their jobs
I can sympathise with Naked CIO's frustration but there's another side to this. Naked CIO asks: "Why does everyone inside organisations think they know better than the IT department when it comes to technology?" The users of IT may not know about IT but they do know what they need to do their jobs.

One might turn the question round and ask: "Why do IT departments so often think they know better than everyone else what people need to do their jobs?" Saying "Don't complain - train to be an IT professional and help us change it" is not the answer. It's the IT department's job to provide the tools for the business; not just to meet board targets on cost but to listen to users' needs. That doesn't always happen.
Simon Garrett, UK

Board rules
In response to Simon Garrett: "It's the IT departments' job to provide the tools for the business; not just to meet board targets on cost, but to listen to users' needs. That doesn't always happen."

I think you'll find plenty of IT departments that are unhappy with what they provide - and would love to give a better service. But, they report to the board, and have to implement what the board tells them are their requirements.

And don't forget that what a user wants to do isn't always what the board wants them to be doing!
Simon, Cumbria

Project manager fail!
And it goes even further than the pure IT department. I just completed an assignment at a telecoms organisation and they were putting senior line managers through the Prince 2 Practitioners course and when they succeeded they were immediately called Project Managers and expected to fulfil the role of PM. It takes time and a load of scars to become an effective PM.

I was also contracting in a card company some years ago and had to give a lecture on advanced PM techniques to a several PMs and as I hit the third slide noticed that glazed eyes were the norm, so asked how much PM experience they had and the answer was "none". They were all graduates who had joined this company as "project manager". And people wonder why one in three projects fail!
Anonymous, Surrey

Nails, heads and sledge hammers
Hits the nail on the head with a sledge hammer! Though there are other engineering functions that have had the same problem, long before IT became an industry. It is a longstanding issue and often because the grandiose dreams of the naive few are brought down to earth by those who actually do know what is involved.
Nick Cole, Scotland

We are hobby accountants
You might not complain to HR or accounting about policies, but over on this side of the pond it's classic break time conversation. "Of course they won't let us do X or Y because that makes sense".

And we are all hobby accountants ... unless you don't live by a budget.

Also, people are growing more confident in their use of technology, it's only natural that they would begin to generate opinions and express them.
Anonymous, Texas, US

Stick to your day job
Why do so many IT nerds think they're experts on journalism then?
Ron Seal, Surrey

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"Idea everything's going to the cloud is folly"
Despite a new-found love for cloud computing, Microsoft isn't ready to put traditional on-premises software out to pasture just yet.

Nothing new
Cloud computing applied to large or medium sized businesses makes sense if they implement it on an intranet and keep all assets in-house, then there are no issues over jurisdiction, privacy, security and so on.

As such this idea has been around for years in the form of thin client computing when applied to the general population and small businesses it is little more than a marketing dream designed to give the cloud companies a steady revenue stream.
Karen Challinor, UK

Doesn't provide the answer to life
So as long as the geniuses who think up wonderful schemes are aware that the 'cloud' does not encompass the answer to life, the universe and everything. And that ultimately the cloud will not be there 100 per cent of the time, just like the weather. It may work for some users but not all users, for some of the time but not all of the time.
Nick Cole, Scotland

Marketing gloss
The cloud is, as many have already suggested, a fresh marketing gloss on a boring old concept. It is the last blush of the traditional business hosting concept, before too many people realise that the costs associated with doing this stuff yourself and so truly owning your own information have come tumbling to a point where self hosting becomes irresistibly practical
Andrew Meredith, Wiltshire

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