The enterprise-wide deployment of an application can be incredibly labor-intensive and expensive, depending on the number of desktops and the geography over which they are spread. While programs such as Microsoft’s Zero Administration Initiative and other deployment methods, such as network-based applications installations and Web-based deployment and installation, make life easier for IS administrators, thin-client/server computing lends itself well to solving the application deployment problem since all users share the same source for running their applications. The IS manager installs the application once on the WinFrame server, and the application is immediately available to every user who logs on to that server.
Install an application once; deploy it to many users.
In this section, we’ll look at how to install applications on a thin-client/server configuration using WinFrame. Then we’ll go a step further and examine how to make specific applications available to a user without the user having to go through the Windows NT desktop after activating the WinFrame session.