Back to Thin Clients, Again

"X as a Service" models may reduce the workstation to a dumb terminal more and more, we are hearing, again. Call them "thin clients," or "zero clients" or something else, the emergence of cloud computing and web-delivered software is pushing computing to a new architecture that is not a "back to the future" mainframe model, but some new form of highly-distributed, loosely-coupled model that often involves more "assembly" of applications and experiences than simple "invoke and use" models.

One example is each users' experience of "Facebook." My own assembled experience is different from that of every other user, even though we all use the core Facebook app.

For enterprises and business users, the new paradigm means much more concern about data security, availability and "vendor lock-in, though also providing greater ease of management and lower cost.

For communications service providers it means a potentially enhanced role in the ecosystem. For app providers it means faster development, lower selling and distribution costs. Every new business ecosystem requires genuine value for every participant in the ecosystem, and cloud computing is shaping up to be that sort of thing.

The network becomes the computer; Borg versus Enterprise?