The Shrinking Datacenters

"Data centers are changing in size; some are getting smaller and more nimble, while others are increasing both in capacity and square footage. However, the one constant is that many large enterprise facilities are either increasing bandwidth, linking branch offices into one corporate headquarters site (and therefore increasing size) due to better fiber-optic connections across town or even between cities, or consolidating services and creating vast virtualized environments to such a great extent that the data center is shrinking."

A key factor enabling this shrinking of data centers is : server consolidation and implementation of virtualization technologies (both on server and storage side). This is logically followed by a second phase where existing desktops and laptops are converted to thin computing.
http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/P2912/23p12/23p12.asp&guid=

The implication for IT marketers evangelising thin computing is : to keep an eye on companies adopting any virtualization related technologies - or going in for server consolidation. These are the customers who will be most likely to adopt thin client computing in the near future.