Littlewoods takes the faster, cheaper thin-client route

Littlewoods is cutting costs and roll-out time by installing thin clients in its stores.

The UK retailer changed its plans to install PCs in its 115 nationwide stores when it added up the cost, time and logistical problems involved in installing and upgrading PCs. Instead, it chose Wyse's Winterms for its 120-user upgrade.

Andy Dawson, Littlewoods' technical projects manager, said: "It's much cheaper this way. We would have had to send somebody to each store every time we'd want to do any upgrades. Now the support engineer can just visit the servers at the support centre to upgrade any terminal in the UK."

Dawson was also impressed that untrained staff could get help remotely from the system's online shadowing capability.

The company's main applications are run on centrally located Unix boxes; Citrix WinFrame and the WyseWorks Remote Administrator are run on four Compaq ProLiant 6000 servers. The whole project cost less than #1m.

Dawson added: "WyseWorks allows us to manage the Winterms from the server.

We can change parameters on terminals anywhere without leaving the office."

See also:

Littlewoods Pools to get web facelift

The Littlewoods Pools will be extended online through the launch of pan-European website by Trevor Hemmings, the entrepreneur who bought the company last week for £161m.  04 Jul 2000

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