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Technology Stocks : Fat Client & Thin Server
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To: Stormweaver who wrote (5)7/24/1999 9:30:00 PM
From: RTev  Read Replies (1) of 20
 
It seems to me that we're moving in two different directions, but neither of them is the fat client/thin server world you envision.

On the one hand we have fat servers and fat clients. On the other are side are fat servers and thin clients that serve specialized purposes -- "information appliance" in current parlance.

Why are the servers getting so much fatter? It probably partly because Sun, Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Oracle and all the other companies that sell servers or their components know they can get extra bucks for extra features. But there's more to it than that. Part of it is being driven by customer needs.

IT organizations noted some time ago that it's expensive to maintain all those fat clients that they've deployed onto desktops. As always, the IT folks have created an acronym for the problem: TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

The response from vendors to high TCO has been to add features to the server that attempt to rein it in through things like systems management software and directory services.

That's only one aspect of it, of course. You mention that a db would probably reside on your thin client, but where would the processing be done? Servers now become ever bigger and faster so that they can handle the transactions needed to feed only the requested data to the client. Are you suggesting that they should become dumber and let each client download all the data needed to process a query or other transaction?

I just don't see any reason now or in the near term for servers to become simpler.
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