In the course of a comprehensive replacement project, Dutch IT service company Tweco IT equipped around 400 optician’s shops with IGEL Thin Clients. The new machines act inter alia as graphic info-stations, and thanks to their high connectivity replaced a major part of the heterogeneous terminal landscape.

The perils of an existing sight defect often become glaringly evident when you’re choosing a new frame for your specs. You can’t put on your old glasses as well, so everything in the mirror in front of you remains blurred or totally invisible. The result is, you can’t see whether the frame you’re trying on suits your face or not. In Holland, those who wear glasses no longer need worry that their new specs might not quite look as good after they’re bought them as they did (or maybe didn’t) look in the shop mirror. In the 400 or so shops of chains Ketten Pearle Opticiens and Eye Wish Groeneveld, discreet web-cams record customers’ faces wearing the chosen frames. Thus, before deciding, customers can check out with the help of their old glasses and an elegant Multiq 122e-TFT display how the new frame really looks on them.

Thin Clients for a clever information system At Pearle, they are of course proud of their new customer information system. But they are no less proud of the associated hardware of the info terminal as well. Because under the customer counter there lurks no hulking great workplace computer, as one might expect, furnishing the appropriate graphics application. Instead, on the counter is a decorative, roughly A4- sized, 2" (5 cm) thick Thin Client made by German company IGEL Technology. By mid-2002, around 2,500 machines are due to be communicating with the company’s 500 or so UNIX and Linux servers.


Rearranging the terminal landscape

Pearle Europe BV, a company that also owns German opticians Apollo Optik GmbH, commissioned Dutch IT service company Tweco IT to re-engineer the heterogeneous terminal landscape of the two Dutch chains of opticians Ketten Pearle Opticiens and Eye Wish Groeneveld. Once it got to work, Tweco soon discovered a cocktail of around 2,500 terminals made by different manufacturers and connected with the servers in series. The IBM clone, Wyse and Dorio terminals needed to be replaced by a uniform long-term infrastructure with CAT5 ethernet links. This meant the graphics of the information system could be standardised and at the same time the administration and maintenance costs of the overall system substantially reduced. The new machines also needed to have the X11R6 protocol so as to be able to communicate with the SCO UNIX and United LINUX server operating systems. A further requirement of the system, in addition to communicating with the customer information system, was to provide secure access to the existing Progress database and the companyspecific PEROS (Pan-European Retail Optical System) SCO UNIX application. All these different applications run centrally on the servers.


Sustainable investment

From the first, Pearle’s aim was to achieve a universal terminal landscape with its investment. One of the hottest issues in deciding what to buy was ongoing operating costs but, on top of that, the terminals also needed to have great user-friendliness and correspondingly robust hardware. To ensure futureproof investment, it was therefore necessary not only to meet technical requirements but also to be able to offer a correspondingly low total cost of ownership (TCO) figure.

These factors depend substantially on the flexibility (i.e. host-connectivity) of the Clients. Other factors in a sensible long-term investment were the independence of the terminal operating system and ongoing maintenance. But further development and upgrading of Client firmware, emulations and more client-side software components such as the hardware drive for the attached web-cam were also integrated at the planning stage. Finally, immediate availability and speedy, simple commissioning of the new machines were also important criteria in the choice of manufacturer.


IGEL Thin Clients

On Tweco’s recommendation, Pearle opted first of all to introduce around 1,000 Thin Clients made by German manufacturer IGEL Technology. Tweco went mainly for the IGEL-416 Winestra model. These are noiseless machines having no drives or fans. They come with the required X11R6 communications protocol as standard and also have at the ready a 10/100Base T Fast ethernet interface to the local server-link, with Wake-on- LAN functionality.

In respect of connectivity, the IGEL-416 Winestra fulfilled the functional requirements without problem, being a flexible Thin Client in the IGEL programme. As Tweco IT’s MD Anne Jonker said in this connection: ‘The integrated PowerTerm emulation suite of IGEL Clients, with its numerous terminal emulations, provided Pearle with the vital Host access. All existing terminals could therefore be replaced without difficulty and without inadvertently introducing a new pinch-point in the system.’ If required, the same machines could be introduced outside the UNIX and Linux world. Anne Jonker is enthusiastic about the flexible use of IGEL Thin Clients: ‘We’re introducing Thin Clients in numerous replacement projects in various industries. The range of integrated standard protocols mean they can be operated with other server operating systems such as Microsoft Windows 2000 servers or Citrix Metaframe.’

Pearle has no sympathy with the persistent notion of supposedly ‘lame’ or ‘dumb’ terminals. The 300 MHz NSC Geode GX1 CPU and 32MB RAM of the IGEL-416 Winestra ensure the necessary performance to conjure up the newly framed customer faces needle-sharp in 24-bit quality on the TFT display within seconds. The update of the firmware stored in the 16MB flashmemory is effected in an extremely simple and costsaving way via the central administration of the clients.


Plug and play installation

As with all IGEL Thin Clients, the fully enclosed Linux-based operating system generally has no influence on compatibility with applications servers, because handling the exchange of data is left entirely to the integrated communications protocols. A Bruggink, in charge of IT at Pearle Benelux BV, was extremely impressed by the immediate availability of the Thin Clients: ‘The installation of the IGEL machines went off on the proverbial plug and play procedure. No special modifications were necessary at all, and users were able to carry on working at once in their customary environment.’ Employees in the optician’s shops also reacted very positively to the switchover, according to Bruggink. ‘Except for the new graphic demo application, our employees have exactly the same work environment as before.’


Fruitful collaboration

By mid-2003, all 400 shops of the two chains will be equipped with IGEL Thin Clients. So far, 1,000 of the 2,500 terminal installations have been replaced with IGEL machines. According to Pearle, working with the German manufacturer has been extremely fruitful for the further development of the project. Says A Bruggink in conclusion: ‘We’re very satisfied with the degree of service offered us by IGEL Technology. Our feedback from the ongoing project has already yielded benefit in the form of new features in the IGEL firmware. This speedy reaction to our needs and their prompt implementation provides further confirmation of the decision to go for IGEL Thin Clients.’


www.igel.com