ALLAN GRANT, DIRECTOR OF IT for Matrix Rehabilitation, was looking for a way to boost worker performance. Matrix, which provides outpatient physical therapy from 190 clinics in 12 states, needed to stay competitive in a market where skyrocketing expenses, intense competition and increasingly slim margins are the norm.

With that in mind, when the time came for a normal round of PC upgrades, Grant decided instead to implement a thin-client solution -- Citrix System's MetaFrame server-based software and Microsoft Windows terminal servers. The project was a success: The system's direct connection to the company's central database in Plano, Texas, reduced application access time by half, allowing workers faster access to critical patient data. As a result, Grant says, Matrix employees can enter up to 25 more patient visits and charges into the system per day.

Additionally, Grant and his IT staff can now get new clinics up and running without ever leaving Matrix headquarters. The company's IT group configures the Windows-based terminals in Plano and ships them out nationwide, reducing staff requirements and lowering travel costs.

"We'll save more than $2 million in our first two years," says Grant.

The IT world is certainly familiar with thin clients. Dumb terminals connected to mainframes were almost anorexic. But as personal computers improved, prices dropped and the drive to distributed computing gained momentum, thin-client computing all but vanished.

The recent rise of Internet-based computing and corporate intranets, however, has caused a resurgence in the thin-client space. According to an IDC survey from last August, shipments of thin clients increased 90 percent in 1999, with more than 50 percent of respondents reporting they had replaced at least some PCs with thin clients. "We're seeing a very healthy growth rate," says Bob O'Donnell, research director for device technology at IDC in Framingham, Mass. "A lot of people are talking about enterprise thin clients being the next big thing."

But experts warn that thin clients aren't a panacea. Businesses need to employ them in the right place at the right time in order to experience their benefits.

From Fat to Thin

Thin clients offer businesses several advantages. True thin-client terminals have no moving parts: they access applications and data via a server and generally don't offer local storage, so they require minimal maintenance and don't experience hard drive crashes; nor are they as susceptible to invaders such as viruses. The rise of ASPs promises that increasing amounts of software will become available for thin-client use. Even Microsoft -- the 500-pound gorilla of PC software makers -- continues to promote thin clients, currently through its terminal server product and in the future with its .NET platform.

And rather than providing support on a per-desktop basis, an IT department must simply maintain the server. For companies that have several offices spread around the country or a high volume of computer-based workers, that's significant. "We don't have to support the software on machines that aren't in our control, which reduces travel time, shipping costs and so

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