Raspberry Pi in enterprise
Did you know that thousands of companies around the world use Raspberry Pi for their end-user computing requirements?
It isn’t a new concept: Raspberry Pis have been used by businesses for a number of years as thin clients.
So what is a thin client? Instead of having a powerful and power-hungry PC on your desk that has your applications and data stored on its hard drive and carries out all your computing tasks locally, a thin client is usually a lower-cost computer, optimised for desktop virtualisation, shared services, or browser-based computing.
Thin clients are typically seen as more secure, less expensive, easier to manage, and more scaleable than traditional “fat client” PCs.
Now they are becoming even more relevant as applications are migrated to or born in the cloud, and businesses take advantage of Raspberry Pi’s low cost, small form factor, and low power consumption, which helps meet their environmental objectives. This, combined with the fact that they are centrally managed and inherently more secure than a distributed IT infrastructure, makes a Raspberry Pi thin client a serious choice for companies around the world.
With the simplest possible setup, individual users can work with email, documents, spreadsheets, and presentations on their Raspberry Pi 4 or Raspberry Pi 400 and the free LibreOffice suite of applications that comes with Raspberry Pi OS. For those wishing to use Microsoft or Google applications, you can simply access Office 365 or Google Workspace from Raspberry Pi’s accelerated Chromium browser.
Most business customers, though, want an “enterprise-ready” thin client. And thanks to our established network of specialist partners around the world, organisations can buy centrally managed, optimised VDI solutions that support Citrix, Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, and VMWare Horizon, as well as a host of other cloud-based services.
If you’d like to understand how Raspberry Pi and our partners can help you with your end user computing requirements, please contact me or visit Thin clients with Raspberry Pi. We’ll be pleased to help you find the best solution for your business.
6 comments
chris
the “Thin clients with Raspberry Pi” link at the bottom of the article is broken.
49s
If Respberry pi is used in Corporate offices, there will be a huge savings of Electricity, Money, Space Area. We should start evolving Respberry pi on a larger scale.
AndrewS
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/this-giant-raspberry-pi-3-actually-works/
;-)
jamesh
We agree entirely! Moving to Raspberry Pi saves a lot of electricity during use, but also in manufacture. You save on plastics as they are small, you save on transports costs for the same reason. It’s ecologically very sound indeed.
Ian Hollis
I think this is very similar to the original “microcomputer” revolution. In the early days the “big iron” users stood around telling us they were dinky and had no place, except as terminals. Then microcomputers got more and more powerful until IBM established the defacto PC architecture. Now SBCs are showing us similarities and are starting to make incursions into the big-end of town. I remember being laughed at by my colleagues when I showed them the original Raspberry Pi. Now, just like my mainframe colleagues some 40 plus years ago, they’ve caught on and are singing the praises of SBCs (particularly the Raspberry Pi) and saying how they always knew there was room for another platform. I wonder if they (or their successors) will miss the next revolution in the same way? I’m sure the Raspberry Pi could never have originated outside of Britain, as IT thinking elsewhere is too linear. Eben Upton thought outside the box. I hope posterity recognises him in the same way it recognises Gates, Jobs, Wozniak, et al.
QuestCraft VR Download
Raspberry Pis have been used by the industrial sector for a number of years and they will save the cost of products and time.