Back to the dumb terminal?

Does history repeat itself? I’m not sure about that but maybe IT does. At least, the question needs to be asked when you look at the new centralized IT architectures which are coming out, taking us back to earlier days. Applications are moving onto virtual servers and terminals are becoming (or returning to being) simple user I/O devices to access those applications. Is this the return of the dumb terminal?

Thanks to mobility, virtualization, Web 2.0 and SaaS, a new generation of IT architectures is arriving, based on new uses, new business models and new technologies. In a few years, I bet that datacenters will be virtualized, applications hosted in the enterprise, software vendors or services providers’ infrastructures, and laptops transformed into simple terminals with 3G or wifi connections.

This vision, shared by analysts, seems to be a natural evolution of what has already started. And this move should accelerate because of new opportunities:

• Users will become consumers of web services — no IT expertise required
• In the enterprise, less IT expertise will be required
• Application availability will improve, guaranteed by service provider SLAs
• Infrastructure will be scalable and its cost will depend on enterprise use
• Mobility and working from home will increase productivity and make IT more sustainable by reducing unnecessary travel.

Even if this future seems great, we have to be realistic. At this stage two issues need to be addressed:

1. High bandwidth network availability. If users must be connected to use applications, that means they must be able to connect from anywhere. This issue will be solved soon as telco networks reach higher levels of coverage in enterprises, home offices and public areas.
2. Security. The challenge is now (a) to bring trust into the hosted architecture (what happen when corporate applications are no longer running on the enterprise’s own servers?) and (b) to protect data against web threats and browser vulnerabilities which are the hacker’s new “Eldorados”.

In creating commonIT one of our key goals was to help development of this new architecture and these new uses. That’s why our mission statement is to make users free of security and mobility issues.

That’s what we mean by “Stress-free internet”