The addition of dumb terminals to the mainframe gave the users direct, hands-on, connections to the corporate computer. Users no longer had to wait for a computer operator to run their jobs, they could enter the data and initiate processing themselves.

There were still delays involved. Dumb terminals were useful for inputting and displaying information, but because they had no processing ability it was necessary for the user to interact with the mainframe in order to interact with their data. Batch jobs previously could be run one-by-one if necessary, but mainframes had to deal with all attached terminals seemingly at once. This lead to delays as users waited for the mainframe to "turn around" their terminal messages while they interacted with their data.

Still, the delays were now down to seconds or minutes, instead of hours or days.