Introduction

In today's high-tech market, the value of a product or service to an enterprise has boiled down to two simple concepts: it must either create new profitable revenue flow or save the company money. If it does not clearly fulfill one or both of these criteria, the product or service is not worth buying.

Thin-Client Computing, also known as Server-Based Computing, belongs to the exclusive category of technology having clear value propositions both in terms of cost savings and increased end-user productivity.

During the recent years many corporations have employed client-server technology to improve corporate productivity and the decision making process by providing users with more timely access to data. Deploying client-server technology though has not been without its challenges. Companies often find themselves dealing with islands of information and environments that are difficult to integrate and manage. The cost of ownership is inordinately high and the original goal of flexible, secure access to the corporate data remained elusive.

Recently web technologies have emerged as a credible alternative to client-server. They are more cost effective, cross platform capable, and offer universal access when compared to a typical client-server configuration. The Web enables user control of information by empowering individuals to access data when and where they need it rather than depending on intermediaries. However, this solution is difficult to manage and not without its own shortcomings, the most significant of which is creating the application in a new programming language.

"The basic goal of thin-client technology is to make the jobs of both IT administrators and end users easier and at the same time increase productivity. Thin-client technology--specifically Web-based thin-client servers--allows for minimal deployment and maintenance by IT staff and the end users are happy as a result."