Personal cloud to replace PC by 2014??
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To clarify, the private business world does, admittedly, exploit advanced tech more effectively, although it too has its issues on occasion. My recent experience, however, (past 10 years) stems mostly from the public sector which seems to have been more quagmired in its inadequate use of the same tech. There's a lot more waste, in expense and usage of time, exacerbated by the employment of more complex tools (and oftentimes to many engineers, advanced = more complex = less user-friendly = we gotta keep them around 'cause nobody knows how it works = job security). Additionally, I don't find the quality of management to be as high, nor are the lower rungs at the IT level.
I dunno. Maybe the answer is to make different versions of software. For the private sector, keep doing what they're doing and it works most of the time. For the public sector, dumb it down so that it can be operated at a 5th grade reading level.
I dunno. Maybe the answer is to make different versions of software. For the private sector, keep doing what they're doing and it works most of the time. For the public sector, dumb it down so that it can be operated at a 5th grade reading level.
Indeed...
Excellent post!
The proliferation of ever cheaper printers and copiers in the 80s and 90s certainly did not help in the paper reduction either. Who hasn't experienced that newly minted MBA generating reams and reams of make-work in an effort to look managerial?
^^^ Too true. It seems almost to be a mandate for all the rookies in any field to fabricate the pretense of progress by filling every square centimeter on his/her desk with reports and print-outs. Must be what they're teaching the kids in school these days.
Truly paperless offices are just impractical, and nothing more than a treehugger pipe dream.
You'd need a pretty damn well thought out IT infrastructure to make such an arrangement portable and featureful enough to compete with the versatility of paper, as well as sufficient funds to train and employ staff to administrate it, purchase/renew software licenses, and pay support fees, to make it reliable enough that it can be depended on as the only available medium of productivity. Most small businesses can't afford this.
The only out-of-the-box advantage would be fool-proof mitigation against water/fire damage in the form of quick and convenient off-site backups over some network.
Most large businesses will already have the necessary infrastructure in place, but they also have more to lose if it goes wrong, which becomes even more likely the greater the size and complexity of the infrastructure and its traffic load gets; besides, a business that can afford the technical means to make a paperless office viable can also afford all the paper they'd ever need to not go paperless. Why bother fixing something that isn't broken?
Using paper efficiently is one thing (it's just common sense, really), but avoiding it altogether is just nonsensical.
You'd need a pretty damn well thought out IT infrastructure to make such an arrangement portable and featureful enough to compete with the versatility of paper, as well as sufficient funds to train and employ staff to administrate it, purchase/renew software licenses, and pay support fees, to make it reliable enough that it can be depended on as the only available medium of productivity. Most small businesses can't afford this.
The only out-of-the-box advantage would be fool-proof mitigation against water/fire damage in the form of quick and convenient off-site backups over some network.
Most large businesses will already have the necessary infrastructure in place, but they also have more to lose if it goes wrong, which becomes even more likely the greater the size and complexity of the infrastructure and its traffic load gets; besides, a business that can afford the technical means to make a paperless office viable can also afford all the paper they'd ever need to not go paperless. Why bother fixing something that isn't broken?
Using paper efficiently is one thing (it's just common sense, really), but avoiding it altogether is just nonsensical.
I thought the same as you guys, even as recently as a few months ago, and while 2014 is pushing it to replace PCs, I could see cloud technology replacing them by 2020. What leads me to believe this other than the articles? 80% of Microsoft's R&D was based on cloud technology...nuff said.
RAMA
RAMA
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100% agree. I certainly don't advocate a non-paperless world. It is needed as the context demands. The key word in your statement, however, is efficiently.
When management doesn't even try, that is when it gets bad. What's worse is that even though management demands paper for everything, they also demand 100% digital backup of all the paper (and sometimes vice-versa), effectively doubling the workload - a workload that is increasing exponentially each year as data capacity increases exponentially. At one point, we will reach a threshold of diminishing returns and all productivity will be thrown out the window. It will then be left to those idiot MBA's to blame the poor worn-out IT guys for not "being team players" or "keeping up with the times". It's a vicious circle and it all goes downhill. Seen it many times and it's not going away.
When Microsoft starts subsidizing bandwidth costs and can guarantee a 100% up time, then we can talk. A "PC replacement" implies that we're not just talking about Office documents and MP3 files on the cloud, but also large files like backups and HD videos, things that eat up bandwidth quickly.
We'll see, but Google Drive already promises over 99% uptime...hard drives at home don't necessarily have 99% uptime, or home networks.
You're not addressing his main point.
The PC won't be replaced any time soon. Remember the cloud is about software/data storage, a PC is hardware.
Once I have a file locally on my HD it takes only a matter of seconds to open it. Even files Gb files. Stoed on the cloud I could easily be waiting an hour+ to DL in order to work on it. How is that efficent?
Once I have a file locally on my HD it takes only a matter of seconds to open it. Even files Gb files. Stoed on the cloud I could easily be waiting an hour+ to DL in order to work on it. How is that efficent?
The companies diving headfirst into don't seem to concerned about it, they are devoting huge amounts of resources into making it happen, I think business will adopt it to a higher degree than individuals, at least at first.
Neilson's law of internet bandwith:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980405.html
Exponential growth at work. There's plenty of bandwith to be had. I got a DSL modem in 2001 and cable modem in 2002. Speed varied from 1Mbps to 3 Mbps...now I have 35Mbps, and my cable provider goes over 100Mbps on the high end.
The cellphone providers may be at the forefront of data caps right now, but more will join them. Unlimited bandwidth is dying as a business model.
And yet in the real world, it's always growing...what makes you think the paradigm of data caps won't grow?? Today it may be at one level, but in 5 years, that level will shift with growing capacity. Again, you're thinking one dimensionally.
Why? They'll have everyone who uses cloud services by the balls then. They'll be able to cap and charge however they like and people will have to pay it.
They're probably salivating at the thought of everything being on clouds.
This smacks of a solution for want of a problem. Brilliant strategy if that's what they're angling at. It will probably be the next big bubble.
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