Thin client computing

We come full circle once again. From dumb terminals to high-powered workstations, to thin clients. We had poweful mainframe computers, with their superlative applications, which did everything from booting a dumb-terminal to executing a database query to performing high-performance scientific calculations. Then, the user became more demanding and powerful workstation-server was introduced. The rise of the mighty workstation. That allowed you to run heavy applications like spreadsheets and word-processors and graphic manipulation softwares on your desktop. You could even play games on it! Then, came the mighty web-server that reversed the trend. Everything you did on your workstation was now done by a web application. Though not completely, yet. Why is it that we have such powerful client machines, still we host the application on a web server somewhere else and use a thin client like a browser to access its functionality? Many reasons that have now become important -- manageability, availability, easy maintainance and client independence. SaaS (Software as a Service) is taking away all client softwares to the server, though not completely, yet. Later on we will have all kinds of devices, with all kinds of capabilities, in terms of display, memory, speed and mobility accessing the internet. Naturally, no one would like to design application for all of these. Rather, clients will be designed for applications. Every device will have the ability to use Web Services. The tide is turning once again, back to the same place where it came from. From dumb terminals to high-powered workstations, to thin clients. Can you predict the next cycle? :)