" By 2005, as much as 60 percent of new .NET applications will be designed with high-fidelity client deployment in mind " - Gartner.

smart client (n)  Definition: Smart clients are easily deployed and managed client applications that provide a smart and rich interactive experience by leveraging local resources and intelligently connecting to distributed data sources.

Smart clients provide more and better options for connecting to information on networks and the Internet, helping users and businesses respond to rapidly changing business needs.

Rich (thick) Client solutions provide a rich user interface and are very responsive, but are hard to deploy and support remotely

Thin Client (Browser Based) Solutions are easy to deploy and support but give a poor user experience and are dependant on having network connectivity to function.

Smart Client applications have all the benefits of a browser based solution plus the functionality and richness of user interface typical of thick client solutions.

Smart client applications can operate without a network connection, synchronising with the central server when they are next connected to the internet or LAN.

In a paper titled "How to Decide Between a Browser-Based or Rich Client," analysts Uttam Narsu and John Meyer of the research firm Giga Information Group wrote:

"[HTML] worked well for brochure-ware . [but] it was not able to meet the challenge . in delivering rich, flexible, and easy-to-use desktop applications. With the recent maturation of rich-client technologies like .NET Windows Forms . it is time for companies to stop automatically assuming that an HTML client user interface (UI) is the only cost effective and acceptable UI architecture. With the past problems of rich-client distribution and management essentially now non-issues, companies should be basing their UI technology choices on the architecture that is best suited for meeting the business application needs today and carrying the application successfully into the future."

What characterises as Smart Client?

• They "consume," or interact with, Web services that are based on Extensible Markup Language (XML), a widely accepted computer industry standard that enables the exchange of data between disparate computer systems, programming languages, and software applications.
• They take advantage of the local processing power of the client device, providing an extra measure of performance that is often missing in pure Web-based computing, which is highly dependent on the capabilities of a particular network's bandwidth.
• They can be easily deployed, maintained, and updated from a central server, giving organizations the ability to remotely monitor and control the functionality, security, and cost of corporate applications.
• They can be used online or offline, ensuring that user productivity is not compromised even when not connected.
• They can be easily tailored to operate on different types of computing devices, from desktop PCs to Tablet PCs, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's), and mobile phones with little or no recoding, so companies get the most from their development resources.

http://www.microsoft.com/net/SmartClient.mspx