Keep out of the Pokey with Thin Computing

It's nice to mix it up by adding in some articles on sustainable computing that deal with the social aspects. Generally, these are the ones that get the boardroom to respond. Steve Kaplan has a nice article here on how the Sarbanes-Oxley Act can push companies towards the thin client solution. He writes:

Beyond providing an environment much more conducive to satisfying Sarbanes-Oxley, a thin-client architecture also makes far more economic sense than a distributed computing environment. For instance, individual PCs no longer need upgrading in order to accommodate more resource-intensive applications or operating systems. Remote offices generally do not require servers, tape backups, UPS devices or network administrators. And the requirement for PC-support technicians goes away (if a PC breaks, it generally is replaced with an inexpensive Windows terminal that has no moving parts at all and a meantime between failure measured in decades).

I've said before that there sustainability is composed of three parts - economic, social, and environmental. Steve's suggestion is a win, win, win.