Over 20 years ago when I was still moving lots of nice big mainframes and people were using "dumb" terminals and maybe a PC for business, Client-Server computing was the next best thing. At least better than sliced bread.

I can't remember how many times I had to justify the cost of a server (mainframe) with a dumb terminal vs developing a fancy GUI interface on a PC and doing some processing on the desktop.

I understood the PC could do the graphics better but some of the implementations I saw and the cost that companies went to, was just lunacy from a business justification perspective.

Then you had fat clients and thin clients. 

Explaining the concept to the person who's bum would look big no matter what they wore was always handled with care, but a fat client required a more powerful PC because the PC did more of the processing. The thin client was really just doing the presentation and could therefore be a less powerful and hence a less costly device.

What I see now is fat clients are out. Your application must be Web Based (not just Web enabled). We are going back to writing applications that run on servers (mainframes?) and use a browser to do the presentation. That's a dumb terminal isn't it but a clever one as it will handle the graphics?

The wheel turns I guess. Now where did I put my mainframe operations guides? Oh I remember they are now called ITIL. Funny acronym for common sense!