A few weeks ago I was blogging about thin clients and powerful central servers.

My scenario would be that applications like Gmail and BlogLines are the start of the huge centralised servers of tomorrow (a return to the mainframes of yore). In other words, the “work” is being done centrally, rather than locally on the PC. I expect this trend to continue.

But parallel to this, we’ll see the rise of ever more functional “mobile devices”, which will be used to access these central servers. Sometimes, this will be done on the move. And more intense work (like writing documents or PowerPoint presentations) that require keyboards will be done by docking the device at home or in the office or indeed, at any public docking station, designed for this very purpose.

This kind of thinking seems to be gaining ground, with a rash of articles over on Emergic. There’s a slight caveat that Rajesh Jain’s vision is that

Emergic is a solution which can thus bring down the total cost of ownership of technology (hardware, software, training, support) to no more than USD 15-20 per person-month.

Thus enabling the technology for millions (billions) of people, many in the developing world. So you could say that he’s already a convert
Firstly, we have John Udell writes about BlogLines

“Like Gmail, Bloglines is the kind of Web application that surprises you with what it can do, and makes you crave more. Some argue that to satisfy that craving, you’ll need to abandon the browser and switch to RIA (rich Internet application) technology — Flash, Java, Avalon (someday), whatever. Others are concluding that perhaps the 80/20 solution that the browser is today can become a 90/10 or 95/5 solution tomorrow with some incremental changes…It seems pretty clear to me. Web applications such as Gmail and Bloglines are already hard to beat. With a touch of alchemy they just might become unstoppable.”

Then Rajesh himself expands on his vision

I set myself a goal: how do we make computing (or better still, ìcommPutingî) available as a utility for Rs 700 ($15) per month per user. This would make it close enough to the pricing of a mobile service. It would also mean taking a wholistic view and focusing on the total cost of ownership ñ computing did not just need a rented computer (or a computer paid for on installments) or just connectivity. The full solution comprises of the access device (the computer), the software and the content that users need, broadband connectivity (512 Kbps or higher) and support.

This has been the vision of what I have called Emergic over the past couple years. Initially, the focus was narrower ñ just hardware and software. My solution has been thin clients, server-centric computing, open-source software and remote server management. But as I contemplated these issues this summer, I realised that we would have to create nothing short of a completely new ecosystem for computing.

Finally, we have coverage from Tim O’Reilly, reported via Daniel Steinberg

The platform is the Internet and not the PC. These applications are built on top of open source but are not themselves open source. Tim says that’s OK because they have built tremendous value. More importantly, if we want to move open source forward, we have to understand that the whole model of what constitutes open source doesn’t work. For example, you could give away the Google code and still not be able to implement Google. If we’re thinking of openness we have to ask what openness means in that context: a world where an app runs on 100K servers and Richard Stallman cannot run it on his personal machine.

Tim’s obviously not making quite the same point, but the powerful central server model prevails.

To me, the most interesting point is Rajesh’s This would make it close enough to the pricing of a mobile service. It’s not just pricing that’ll be like the mobile. The thin client will be the mobile - or at least its descendant.

And that’s what makes the mobile space so exciting.