Digital Walkabout

The New, New World™

I recently read http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/359224392/i-need-to-talk-to-you-about-computers-ive-been - a well thought-out perspective in terms of *usage*. Steve's positions on the "New World" use model and its pervasiveness are rather valid. That is a good thing - we would have very different lives if compute power were still in the hands of "Old World" IT. Despite all the advantages of an "Old World" experience where one needed to know how things worked from the inside out, it greatly limited the applicability and accessibility of computing to relatively few. If you wanted to use a PC in the "Old World", you either needed to know how one worked rather closely, or to be someone of means (executives, business owners, etc.) who could muster an IT shop to do it for you. This kept compute power largely under the control of IT and out of the hands of the masses. In the "New World", all of that has been abstracted away (yes, abstraction is good), to the point where there is a mass market in the industrialised world that can afford and own devices such as smartphones, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs, Integrated Media Devices (IMD) and netbooks. 

The implications of this are where the opportunities lie. Performance, UX, security, manageability, RAS - none of these just go away when Apple, Google or others introduce another "New World" device. These devices are innovative and inspiring in how they bring compute power to the masses, allowing greater economies and efficiencies than before. The application of these devices to anything beyond basic compute are limited, yet the models they help enable are not. It is the emergence of smartphones, MIDs and netbooks that inspires and drives the emerging Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) model. Whether BYOC really takes off or not, the idea is motivating the continued evolution of the compute model, which has enormous implications. Amongst these are the capability of devices *like* iPhones, iPads and more to support much more than basic compute. 

As I see it, the emerging compute models are enabling devices to support user and device-specific requirements through:

• Location-awareness: iPhones and iPads may be neat devices, but when I cannot access corporate resources on them, it limits their usefulness. How many readers use two smartphones for this purpose? Location-awareness allows such devices to support specific policies for corporate and other resources so they can access them. It also allows for location-dependent resources to be optimised for the device, such as WiFi vs 3G, 4G, and for resources to be targeted to where and when the user is active, such as a video call following me from my kitchen, to my sitting room, to my home office, using the devices in each place.
• Device-awareness: iPhones and iPads do this to a degree today - Safari and other apps determine and send information on device capabilities to Cloud and Web services so that they can target these devices' display resolution, form factor, processing and storage capabilities. This is moving from basic detection to richer capabilities introspection, so applications can hook in device features and runtime information (e.g. battery life, throughput, CPU, memory) to optimise for performance, experience, location, and workload. VMMs, Virtual Containers, Rich Services Runtimes as well as MIDs, IMDs, netbooks and notebooks are doing some of this today and this trend is only growing. 
• Workspace-awareness: The ability to move seamlessly from a smartphone or MID to a netbook or notebook is in its early stages, if there at all. Much of it take the form of limited synchronisation - I can view my email, browser bookmarks, contacts and calendar on a iPhone or iPad as well as on netbooks and/or notebooks, but not what I am actively viewing or interacting with - my workspace - so when I go from one to another, I have to find that content again and create a new workspace, a duplicate to a degree. Workspace-awareness allows how I am using my data to follow me along with the data themselves. Mesh/peer-to-peer models have been developed and supports static aspects of this, and are moving to support dynamic ones as well.  

The "New World" that excites me - should I say, the "New, New World" - is one where I can access my applications and data in a way that is seamless, optimised for my preferences and my devices, yet respects the requirements and polices of providers along with my own. This essentially give "New World" and "Old World" users what they need - high-performance, highly-reliable, highly-scalable machines that just get out of your way and let you get things accomplished, at the level that works for you. This last bit is what Steve's "New World" misses - and which frustrates everyone to one degree or another. In the "New, New World", your iPhone would access your corporate, Private Cloud; feel like an extension of your iPad, MacBook and other devices; let view and access content in a way that's always readable; and be able to carry on even when disconnected (which happens more than anyone wants to admit). 

This is where much innovation is taking place, and will continue to do so in the near-to-long term. The vendors are already moving from their extremes in terms of usage models toward this medium where their differentiation and value propositions brought into sharper focus. As the "Old World" shifts to the "New World", and the "New" to the "New, New World", so will you. 

HP and Microsoft align in shift to Cloud Computing

In a move designed to help both companies better address the market for cloud computing, HP and Microsoft announced a deeper strategic (though not exclusive) relationship. The companies will offer integrated infrastructure-to-application solutions, combining HP servers, storage, and networking hardware and services with Microsoft applications and virtualization and management software (Windows Server, Hyper-V, Exchange, SQL Server, System Center). The companies will make an incremental $250 mn investment in the partnership, and will go to market through both companies’ channels as well as with a dedicated combined sales force.

What are the implications for Cloud Computing? This is not a near-term needle-mover but a longer-term positive for both Microsoft and HP, as the partnership provides both vendors with the ability to sell an integrated stack as a private cloud solution. It helps to position Microsoft more favorably vs. VMware, and bolsters Microsoft’s go-to-market, specifically as it adds the ability to sell Microsoft cloud offerings through HP’s services channel. HP benefits from a new go-to-market channel and incremental services opportunities in Microsoft environments, which should be accretive to HP’s overall margin structure. Cisco’s UCS gets its first rival, which validates Cisco’s vertically integrated approach, but also increases competition. As strategic partnerships take on increased importance in a world of cloud computing, new announcements highlight gaps in the offerings of certain IT vendors (Dell, IBM, Oracle) and increases the appeal of certain independent strategic assets (Citrix, Red Hat, Juniper).