The Thin-Client Landscape, Part 1 — Virtualization Review

In-Depth

The Thin-Client Landscape, Part 1

I wrote an
article exploring the evolution of the thin-client market from its
roots in dumb terminals to an industry that saw massive consolidation
in 2025, when Citrix acquired Unicon to create a vertical
“end-to-end” stack, and IGEL absorbed Stratodesk to
increase its presence in the software-only endpoint space. The
independent thin-client landscape evolved into three distinct camps:
Citrix’s closed ecosystem, IGEL’s horizontal software layer, and
10ZiG’s position, offering both hardware- and software-based
thin-client solutions.

This leaves IT leaders with a choice
between buying into a single vendor’s vertical integration or
partnering with a thin-client provider that doesn’t require remote
desktop and application lock-in.

In that…