For some organizations, the upgrade costs from their older hardware are high enough that they don't bother to upgrade, but they still want access to newer software and faster, more responsive systems.

Using terminal services is an obvious solution...

The principles of terminal services are nothing new in the computing world. Ignoring the networking and technological aspect, the basics of terminal servers go back to the big, bad old days of massive single computers (the "mainframe") and hundreds of individual green-screened terminals connected to them over serial cables.

This was how computing was thirty years ago and why so many people are used to the thought of a single computer being responsible for everything, leading to numerous questions from users as to what the 'box' is under the monitor.