Server-based computing: back to the future solves enterprise desktop problems

Choosing information technology (IT) is a high-risk guessing game to some extent because of its strategic nature within organizations and the threat of obsolescence as it turns over rapidly. Because the course of enterprise computing has been dictated by prevailing technologies and expedited by competitive pressures and its strategic significance, complex heterogeneous architectures have become wide spread. The typical enterprise utilizes centralized legacy mainframe and midrange, distributed client server, and is quickly adapting the newest to the mix, Internet/intranet. Moving into each strategy has presented enormous investments in time and new technologies, for which the unsuspecting executive has witnessed ever-shrinking periods of investment payback. Going forward the successful enterprise-computing model will be based on integrated applications and systems, a more manageable architecture that is complemented rather than disturbed by new technologies, and a simplified client device that is independent of the enterprise operating environment. This paper presents server-based computing as a strategy that facilitates simplifying the desktop by migrating its complexities and liabilities into a more effectively managed centralized location, while delivering the same level of functionality and familiar user interface. This approach isolates the dependency of the desktop, and fosters time-to-value, quality of service and administrative effectiveness, universal accessibility, high security, long-term growth and adaptability, and relatively low cost of ownership.