I’ll tell you some facts about the history of thin client computing or the other name is server Based computing. It has its roots in computer systems with multi users, traditionally mainframes accessed by some type of terminal computer. The time passed and computer graphics developed, the terminals were also transformed from ones with a command-line interface to what we use today: thin client computing with a full graphical user interface.
The term “thin client computing” appeared in 1993. The father of the term is Tim Negris, the Vice-President of Server Marketing at Oracle Corporation. The term was created when Negris was launching Oracle 7 with Larry Ellison, the company founder. During that period Oracle wanted to differentiate their software that was oriented to server from Microsoft’s desktop-oriented products. The name produced by Tim Nigris (“thin client”) was popularized by Larry Ellison who used it very often in his speeches and interviews about Oracle products.
Earlier another term was used – “graphical terminal” (because it was based on graphics) which was chosen in contrast to text-based terminals used before. But this name was not well-established among IT specialists working on fat-client computing.
Nowadays the term “Thin Client or Server Based Computing” describes a centralized computing which is a display-only terminal (without any set of software applications, a hard drive and etc.). A thin Client is a quite simple device. It is connected to servers which give you an opportunity to work with data.