Wyse Technology is a manufacturer of
thin clientA thin client is a client computer or client software in client-server architecture networks which depends primarily on the central server for processing activities, and mainly focuses on conveying input and output between the user and the remote server...
hardware and software. It was founded in 1981 by Garwing Wu, Bernard Tse, and Grace Tse. Its headquarters are in
San Jose, CaliforniaSan Jose or San José is the third-largest city in California and the tenth-largest in the United States. The county seat of Santa Clara County, it is located at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region commonly referred to as Silicon Valley...
.
The company became famous in the 1980s as a manufacturer of character terminals. Most of these terminals can emulate several other terminal types in addition to their native escape sequences. People may recognize these terminals as those used with older
libraryA library is a collection of sources, resources, and services, and the structure in which it is housed; it is organized for use and maintained by a public body, an institution, or a private individual. In the more traditional sense, a library is a collection of books. It can mean the collection,...
information systems (electronic
card catalogA library catalog is a register of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations...
).
Wyse Technology is a manufacturer of
thin clientA thin client is a client computer or client software in client-server architecture networks which depends primarily on the central server for processing activities, and mainly focuses on conveying input and output between the user and the remote server...
hardware and software. It was founded in 1981 by Garwing Wu, Bernard Tse, and Grace Tse. Its headquarters are in
San Jose, CaliforniaSan Jose or San José is the third-largest city in California and the tenth-largest in the United States. The county seat of Santa Clara County, it is located at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region commonly referred to as Silicon Valley...
.
The company became famous in the 1980s as a manufacturer of character terminals. Most of these terminals can emulate several other terminal types in addition to their native escape sequences. People may recognize these terminals as those used with older
libraryA library is a collection of sources, resources, and services, and the structure in which it is housed; it is organized for use and maintained by a public body, an institution, or a private individual. In the more traditional sense, a library is a collection of books. It can mean the collection,...
information systems (electronic
card catalogA library catalog is a register of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations...
). The Wyse 99GT and 160 terminals added graphical capability through
Tektronix 4014Tektronix' 4000 series was a family of text and graphics computer terminals based on the company's storage tube technology. No additional electronics were needed to maintain the display, so the 4000 series were less expensive than earlier graphics terminals and became widely used in the CAD market...
emulation.
In 1984, Wyse entered the
personal computerA personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator...
marketplace. The first of these was the Wyse 1000, a computer based on the
Intel 80186The Intel 80186 is a microprocessor and microcontroller introduced in 1982. It was based on the Intel 8086 and, like it, had a 16-bit external data bus multiplexed with a 20-bit address bus...
(which did not see huge volumes due to poor compatibility with the
8088The Intel 8088 microprocessor was a variant of the Intel 8086 and was introduced on July 1, 1979. It had an 8-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and the one megabyte address range were unchanged, however...
). Next came the WYSEpc, an
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
-compatible computer based on the 8088 processor, which had a good following due to its slimline design. Later, Wyse introduced personal computers compatible with the IBM AT based on the 80286 and 80386, which were top sellers. WYSE sold through 2-tier distribution, which limited growth in the late 1980s as mail order companies like
DellDell, Inc. develops, manufactures, sells, and supports personal computers and other computer-related products. Based in Round Rock, Texas, Dell employs more than 76,500 people worldwide ....
and
GatewayGateway Incorporated , an Acer Inc. subsidiary, is a computer hardware company headquarted in Irvine, California, USA which develops, manufactures, supports, and markets a wide range of personal computers, computer monitors, servers, and computer accessories...
entered the marketplace.
Wyse was also an early innovator in off-shore electronics production with its products being built in
TaiwanTaiwan , also known as Formosa , is the largest island of the Republic of China in East Asia. Taiwan is located east of the Taiwan Strait, off the southeastern coast of mainland China...
in company owned facilities.
Since the late 1990s, the company's primary business has been the manufacture of
thin clientsA thin client is a client computer or client software in client-server architecture networks which depends primarily on the central server for processing activities, and mainly focuses on conveying input and output between the user and the remote server...
under the Winterm brand name. These machines differ from the traditional text-mode terminals that made the company famous in that they support modern
GUIGui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
applications using a
mouseIn computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons...
and
windowing systemsA windowing system is a component of a graphical user interface , and more specifically of a desktop environment, which supports the implementation of window managers, and provides basic support for graphics hardware, pointing devices such as mice, and keyboards...
. The clients are able to access these applications using
protocolsIn computing, a protocol is a set of rules which is used by computers to communicate with each other across a network. A protocol is a convention or standard that controls or enables the connection, communication, and data transfer between computing endpoints...
that send drawing commands or raw
pixelIn digital imaging, a pixel is the smallest item of information in an image. Pixels are normally arranged in a 2-dimensional grid, and are often represented using dots or squares. Each pixel is a sample of an original image, where more samples typically provide more-accurate representations of the...
data (instead of strings of text characters) over the data connection. Because of the greater
bandwidthIn computer networking and computer science, digital bandwidth, network bandwidth or just bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bit/s or multiples of it ....
this requires these machines typically use
ethernetEthernet is a family of frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks . The name comes from the physical concept of the ether...
connections to the server, rather than the
RS-232In telecommunications, RS-232 is a standard for serial binary data signals connecting between a
DTE and a
DCE . It is commonly used in computer serial ports...
links used in the past.
Notable employees
Martin EberhardMartin Eberhard is co-founder and former CEO of Tesla Motors, an electric car company in San Carlos, California. He was born in Berkeley, California on May 15, 1960....
began his career as an electrical engineer at Wyse Technology, where he designed the WY-30
ASCIIThe American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
computer terminal as his first product.
David Grus, Philip Graham, Jo Ellen Wagner and Kevin Martin were some of the first engineers working on the WY-1000, and later the WYSEpc. This team had previously worked at
Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. HP has its United States offices at the former old Compaq Campus in unincorporated Harris County, Texas, Latin America offices in Miami-Dade County, Florida,...
in the early 80s, where they worked on HP's first personal computers, such as the HP-150 touch screen computer. Grus is now retired, although Graham and Wagner are at
CiscoCisco Systems, Inc. is a multinational corporation with more than 65,000 employees and annual revenue of US$36.10 billion as of 2009. Headquartered in San Jose, California, it designs and sells networking and communications technology and services....
working on that company's TelePresence range, Graham as the lead.
David Dix worked first on the very first Wyse terminals and later the high end personal computers. David also worked at HP prior to Wyse. Dix is working at
ShoreTelShoreTel is a publicly traded company in Sunnyvale, CA. They are a provider of commercial, closed-source VOIP products. Current implementations of ShoreTel systems include telephone handsets, as well as voicemail servers, switching hardware, analog phone outputs, and other...
.
Richard Wales was the lead hardware engineer on the first color terminal, at Wyse known as the WY-350. Wales also worked at HP prior to Wyse, where he worked on the HP-150 touch screen computer. Wales is now at Cisco as the director of engineering for Cisco's
TelePresence Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance that they were present, or to have an effect, at a location other than their true location....
products.
Tarkan Maner was appointed CEO in February 2007.
External links