Obsidian Systems to showcase thin client case study at Red Hat Summit: Connect Johannesburg 2025

Muggie van Staden, CEO of Obsidian Systems.

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Obsidian Systems, a silver sponsor, in collaboration with Cendio, developer of ThinLinc, will preview a thin client case study at the upcoming Red Hat Summit: Connect 2025 on Wednesday, 9 October 2025, at the Johannesburg Marriott Hotel, Melrose Arch. The in-person event gathers Red Hat experts, customers and partners for a day of hands-on learning and networking.

At the Obsidian stand, attendees will see how ThinLinc remote desktop technology combines with Penguin Solutions’ fault-tolerant platforms, like Stratus ztC Edge and Stratus ztC Endurance, to deliver resilient, user-friendly desktops for teams working in demanding South African conditions. The demo highlights smart card authentication (with session roaming between endpoints), Linux desktops running everyday productivity apps (including Microsoft Edge and browser-based Office 365) and high-quality graphics workloads to show performance over the wire.

Under the hood, Obsidian’s set-up runs multi-session RHEL on redundant Stratus ztC Edge hardware, with virtualisation managed on the platform layer. Sessions are stateless at the endpoint and follow the user. So, they pull the card from one device, insert it into another, and carry on working where they left off. This is a powerful illustration of continuity and security for branch, retail and banking environments.

“South African organisations cannot afford flaky endpoints or avoidable downtime,” says Muggie van Staden, CEO at Obsidian Systems. “What we are showing is a practical way to give people a fast, familiar desktop while keeping data safe in the data centre and applications running on fault-tolerant infrastructure. The user experience is simple, with the reliability coming from the platform.”

The Stratus ztC Endurance family is Penguin Solutions’ flagship fault-tolerant computing platform, designed to keep critical applications online and data protected in the data centre or at the edge. Recent releases emphasise predictive fault tolerance and high availability, enabling IT teams to consolidate workloads without sacrificing uptime.

• Load-shedding, theft and branch-site risks demand robust on-premises/edge designs where data stays central and endpoints can be swapped in minutes.
• Session portability via smart cards reduces support overhead and improves productivity for frontline staff.
• Linux on the desktop plus browser-based apps meets policy and licensing goals while keeping options open for legacy web apps.
• Fault-tolerant servers (ztC Edge/ztC Endurance) help ensure continuity even during power or hardware incidents.

Obsidian will also discuss the network design choices employed in the demo, including a secure overlay network that connects clients to back-end hosts across sites, as well as lessons learned from recent showcases in South Africa.

See it live at the Red Hat Summit: Connect in Johannesburg. Click here for more info.