The PC is No Longer the Center of the Universe

At IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference, held this week in Los Angeles, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke on the state of computing and their vision for its future, both separately and togehter.  The big news is that they agree:

• We are moving from a PC-Centric world to a Network-Centric world filled with millions of devices of every shape and description.
• In this Network Centric world, the PC is just another device, of decreasing importance as the emerging economies come online with their preference for mobile platforms which more closely ressemble smart phones.
• In the Network Centric World, Open Standards and published APIs are very imortant so that new innovations can easily be attached to the network and become new platforms for deelopment.
• The cloud (very large scale shared computing, available for hire) will become uibiquitious, probably sold by platform providers who will recruit ecoosystems of ISVs and provide a well-managed, secure platform, freeing both customers and ISVs from the need to implement hardware where they lack the skills or capital.
• This networkcentric Computing model will require tons of storage and new interaces and methods to discover the information and manage it.
• This enables everyone to have more access to information.  Some of it will be stored in the cloud, but some of it will continue to be stored on site.  It's a hybrid world.

Large traditional vendors like Microsoft will have to choose between adopting the open standards, network centric, cloud approach, finding a new market niche, and slowly becoming less relevant.  That's why Microsoft's chsing so hard after the consumer market with the Yahoo.

Comments

[Ranjit Nayak]

Amy,

Thank you for summarizing and sharing these insightful comments.

Since there are so many different views on what cloud computing is, and is not, it is helpful to understand the viewpoint of industry heavy weights.

Interestingly, Lou Gerstner, ex-IBM CEO had predicted a network centric world in the mid 90s. http://www.businessweek.com/1995/44/b34481.htm

Regards,

Ranjit Nayak

[friarminor]

Mr. Schmidt got that right, Amy!

The PC as we see now may be unrecognizable as a device in the future. Still, devices will be measured by how much they will be able to leverage things of value from the network.

Best.
alain
http://eedious.blogspot.com