One way CIOs have eased the headaches is through server-based computing (SBC). Instead of sitting on laptops or PDAs, applications reside on servers. Users can connect securely to those apps via any device, and when an application needs updating, IT staffers need only do so on the server. In addition, apps don’t need to be rewritten to work with particular devices?a nice dose of pain relief given the complex legacy environments existing in many companies.

There are potential cost benefits to SBC as well. "Some of the key ones are reduced support costs for the applications that are deployed, fewer and shorter help desk calls, and potentially a reduced number of desktop visits," says David Friedlander, an analyst at Forrester Research.

Legacy Leader

The 800-pound gorilla in the SBC space is Citrix, which owns close to 75 percent of the virtual user interface software market, according to IDC (a sister company to CIO’s publisher). Citrix was founded in 1989 by a group of IBM developers who had worked on OS/2. Their goal was to let multiple users gain access to the operating system from multiple devices, mainly Unix servers. When the Internet started to take off in the mid-1990s, however, CIOs started deploying Citrix software to secure access for their mobile users and to provide a greater degree of application centralization.

For years Citrix has been a one-product company, milking its cash-cow MetaFrame software and its partnership with Microsoft. The backbone of the product line is the MetaFrame XP Presentation Server, which works with Windows 2000 and 2003 servers and lets workers access applications using any device, including machines running Unix, Macintosh and Linux operating systems. That’s nice for cash-strapped organizations that may not have the budgets to buy new computers?SBC software like Citrix can run on knuckle-dragging Intel 386 processors as well as the latest Pentiums. Another benefit is that it works in heterogenous environments. "The mainframe is still not dead and never will be. Client/server isn’t dead?Web-based applications haven’t killed it off. And Web services won’t destroy everything before that," says Bob Kruger, senior vice president of product development and CTO at Citrix.