Thirty years ago, Vinod Khosla and his cofounders at Sun Microsystems proposed a daring mantra: 'The Network is the Computer'! The power of computing will soon lie, not on your desktop machine, but in the network that feeds it, they suggested. They were dismissed as fools.
Now, finally, they have been proved right, in ways they never imagined. Consider: what is a search without Google? What is an iPhone without the App Store or an Android phone without Google Play? When many networks combine to form a Cloud and we all have our heads right inside it!
Another trend is in play here: Virtualization.The Nexus tablets and laptops coming soon, are so 'thin' they have virtually no storage or memory, they have to remain permanently connected to the Net where everything is stored.
VMWare is the Bhishma of virtualization and last week at its annual tech mela in Mumbai, Sanjay Mirchandani, Asia Pacific head of the company, signposted another radical development that has implications for the rest of us. The idea of offices allowing employees to bring the computing device of their choice – be it a laptop, an iPad, even a smartphone – to perform their official duties, is a cost effective strategy for companies who save the cost of supplying the PCs. It's called BYOD or Bring Your Own Device; but getting the office software to work in a khijdi of devices, platforms, and operating systems has not been easy.
The answer, says Mirchandani, is to tell users: You bring any device: We'll provide the software to run on it -- any flavour you choose. "Most companies already have a mobile strategy in place. Now they need to go just one step further and add an ‘end user’ layer to their cloud that ensures full security no matter what the device".
It's called End User Computing and it's already being adopted by agile employers in India. "Times have changed”, says Mirchandani, “The hardware – servers and PCs – no longer determine the IT operations of companies. It is the software that is navigating the IT ecosystem today.” The software, in this case, is the OS of your favourite computing device, which will soon double up as your office machine -- and yes, as your "time pass" platform as well.
