| Fat clients: banks really should think |
Financial institutions should work harder to force their clients to be thin, according to a new report from Meridien research and IDC Financial Services entitled 'I'm Not Quite Dead Yet': Fat Clients Cling to Life.
Since when have banks had a say in their clients' diets? But that's not all the report calls for. As IDC's research director, Jeanne Capachin, says: "Financial institutions need to make a decision about fat clients. I think it is best to retire them."
But before you imagine corporate bank managers saying "shape up or find yourself another bank", and before obesity support groups call up to complain, that's not the subject in hand. Meridien and IDC are talking about the size of the computer system that clients use to communicate with the bank, not their waistlines.
Put simply, fat client applications are those that rely on substantial software packages that are installed remotely. So a bank might mail a cash management application to a client as a disc.