Mike Barton wrote on Wired’s Cloudline that there’s no doubting the cloud invasion. But the research firm Gartner (IT) believes the personal cloud will replace the PC as the center of our digital lives as soon as 2014.
Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement, “Major trends in client computing have shifted the market away from a focus on personal computers to a broader device perspective that includes smartphones, tablets, and other consumer devices.” He continues, “Emerging cloud services will become the glue that connects the web of devices that users choose to access during the different aspects of their daily life.”
In the article, Mr. Burton writes that Google plans a cloud-centered future with Google (GOOG) Play and Android mobile OS. But the personal computer will also not miss out on the cloud, as Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL) are planning to weave the cloud into the next generation of their desktop operating systems, Windows 8, and OS X Mountain Lion.
But a cloud-happy future will not be as easy as that, because Gartner says, “it will require enterprises to fundamentally rethink how they deliver applications and services to users.” Gartner sees a number of factors are converging to make for a perfect personal cloud storm by 2014.
Megatrend No. 1: Consumerization— Gartner says what corporate IT has seen so far been a precursor to the major wave that is starting to take hold across all aspects of IT as several key factors come together:
Users are more technologically savvy- The internet and social media have empowered and emboldened users.
- The rise of powerful, affordable mobile devices changes the equation for users.
- Through the democratization of technology, users of all types and statuses within organizations can now have similar technology available to them.
Megatrend No. 2: Virtualization — Virtualization has improved flexibility and increased the options for how IT organizations can set up client environments.
Megatrend No. 3: “App-ification” — Apps change the way applications are designed, delivered, and consumed by users and it has a dramatic impact on all other aspects of the market.
Megatrend No. 4: The Ever-Available Self-Service Cloud – The cloud opens a whole new level of opportunity for self-servicing users. Every user can now have a scalable and nearly infinite set of resources available for whatever they need to do.
Megatrend No. 5: The Mobility Shift — Wherever and Whenever You Want Today, mobile devices combined with the cloud can fulfill most computing tasks, and any tradeoffs are outweighed in the minds of the user by the convenience and flexibility provided by the mobile devices.
Gartner’s Kleynhans said. “In this new world, the specifics of devices will become less important for the organization to worry about. Users will use a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the personal cloud will take on that role. Access to the cloud and the content stored or shared in the cloud will be managed and secured, rather than solely focusing on the device itself.”
Wired says that former Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie made the same point recently, “People argue about, ‘Are we in a post-PC world?’. Why are we arguing? Of course, we are in a post-PC world.” Ozzie reportedly told a conference, ”That doesn’t mean the PC dies; that just means that the scenarios that we use them in, we stop referring to them as PCs, we refer to them as other things.”
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Goodie for Gartner, they get paid for codifying the obvious. Consumers are moving to the personal cloud. DVDs vs.Netflix streams. Files on your hard drives vs. some distant data center run by Dropbox. Photo albums vs. Flickr. Books vs. Kindles and Nooks.
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- Supermodels, Megatrends, and Ultra Big Paradigm Shifts to the Cloud
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.