Today's return to the central computing paradigm is a tacit admission by IT departments that distributed desktop computing has proven too costly. The overhead involved in administering and maintaining client software on hundreds or thousands of user desktops is simply too inefficient. Cost savings can be realized through central control of server and software maintenance. Performance consistency can be achieved regardless of network path because only data fields and screen update information are transmitted. When enhancements are made or bugs are fixed in a server-based architecture, only the centralized server version of the application needs to be updated.
All users immediately benefit from the changes the next time they log on to use the application.
This paradigm shift is occurring rapidly in the Windows world, boosted by some enhancements made to the core Windows operating system and also in conjunction with some third party tools and applications. Consequently, many Unix applications are written with multi-user access in mind. This was a popular form of application design and deployment throughout the 1990s. These applications typically require a Unix desktop, such as a Sparc workstation, on which to run the client portion of the application. Other parts of the application execute on the backend server.