Applications and data are easily maintained in a central location. However, this methodology consumes large amounts of bandwidth. LAN-attached users will have to move up to faster topologies and switching hardware. Remote offices with ultralite clients will no longer be able to operate across 56Kb lines. The movement of images, graphical data, and program code is already slow on T1 lines.
Adequate performance requires even faster transmission mediums, and their accompanying higher costs.
At the opposite end, the fat client model presents different problems. Data replication and synchronization between thousands of workstations is a fundamental issue. This problem is further aggravated by replicating to dial-in mobile users. The thin client provides middle ground for many organizations now. Applications run on the client, and the data resides on a remote server.