The office controller was a networking concept of the early to mid-1980s. The concept was used by
PABX
A business telephone system is a multiline telephone system typically used in business environments, encompassing systems ranging in technology from the key telephone system (KTS) to the private branch exchange (PBX).
A business telephone syst ...
manufacturers as the basis of families of products in which the PBX would supply data connectivity and applications along with its traditional voice services.
The office controller would be a central switch which would link users to applications and provide necessary services such as security. There was much discussion at that time of multimedia voice/data services but the conception of these services was very vague. There was no real understanding of the utility and therefore customer value of these services. As a result, office controller services were usually restricted to various forms of modem pooling.
With the development of
LANs and
PCs, client/server became the dominant distributed application model, along with standalone applications as PCs became more powerful. As a result, the centralised model supported by the office controller fell out of style. Office controller products were withdrawn from the market. Remnants of the idea, with examples such as
thin client
In computer networking, a thin client is a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are sometimes known as ''network computers'', or in th ...
s and
three-layer architecture
The Three-Layer Architecture is a hybrid reactive/deliberative robot architecture developed by R. James Firby that consists of three layers: a reactive feedback control mechanism, a reactive plan execution mechanism, and a mechanism for performing ...
s, did persist with some interest. However the
thick client
In computer networking, a rich client (also called heavy, fat or thick client) is a computer (a "client" in client–server network architecture) that typically provides rich functionality independent of the central server. This kind of computer ...
PC model of services was predominant in the 1990s.
However the office controller idea is not without merit. With the development of
SIP with its
session border controller
A session border controller (SBC) is a network element deployed to protect SIP based voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks.
Early deployments of SBCs were focused on the borders between two service provider networks in a peering environme ...
s and
service-oriented architecture
In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provide ...
s, the centralized creation and management of user services is again finding widespread interest.
References
{{reflist
Networking hardware
Software architecture