From the PC era to the multi-device world
Beyond customer and business considerations, cloud computing is reshaping power dynamics between IT players and adjacent industries : the convergence between information technology, media, and telecommunications will accelerate even further through cloud computing, which enables the deployment of innovative and continuous services.
Today, the choice of operating system (OS) remains critical : users do not have access to the same software depending on whether they choose Windows, Apple, or Linux. Since Windows has long been the dominant operating system, Microsoft has leveraged this position to promote its own applications such as Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.
However, with the rise of the Internet, new players have developed alternative models enabling them to compete with Microsoft. Google now offers email, calendar, and office productivity tools accessible directly through a web browser, regardless of the operating system : Windows, Apple, but also Android or any other system equipped with a web browser, including smartphones, tablets, and soon televisions.
New web standards such as HTML5 will further reinforce this standardization by enabling greater computing power, offline content management, synchronization capabilities, and more.
The “Windows PC” era is over. Content and applications will reside in the cloud, accessible from anywhere and from almost any device.
Cloud computing will enable mobile devices to perform tasks that were previously impossible. Lightweight display devices will remotely access functionalities limited no longer by local storage or computing power, but primarily by screen size, as most storage and processing capabilities move into the cloud.
Synchronization and interoperability will improve significantly, enabling true multi-device usage. A desktop PC at the office, a tablet while traveling, a television at home, a smartphone in the street : same data, same applications. Only offline usage will remain a truly “local” challenge.
Hardware will also evolve, gradually standardizing around the PC model : raw computing power will become less important, while other criteria such as weight and battery life will dominate.
Mobile phones will require larger screens to facilitate application usage. One key differentiating factor may become the ability to dynamically adapt application interfaces to the screen format of the device being used. Some startups are already offering services that make this possible.
Cloud infrastructure will profoundly reorganize the software industry : DVDs and CD-ROMs will disappear in favor of downloads and SaaS models. Applications requiring ever greater computing capabilities, particularly video games, will become universally accessible.
“The home of tomorrow will be connected or it will not exist” : manufacturers promised interconnected devices where all our digital objects would “talk” to one another, refrigerators would automatically order groceries, televisions would allow us to view photos stored on our computers, we would be able to make video calls across the world, and so on. Today, however, the reality is quite different : we are surrounded by disparate devices that communicate with one another only imperfectly through more or less standardized protocols. Anyone who has ever struggled with incompatible drivers, obscure authentication keys, incompatible brands or connectors may reasonably question how real this supposedly interconnected ecosystem truly is.
Today, in order to hope for a reasonably satisfying connected and interoperable experience, consumers generally need to equip themselves within a single brand ecosystem. Apple, for example, has been quite successful at ensuring its devices communicate seamlessly with one another, but at what cost ! And above all within a relatively closed ecosystem, notably designed to preserve user experience quality. Historically, Apple built its vertically integrated offering around the connection to a computer. The iPhone demonstrated that this strategy was correct, and that the need to own a computer connected to high-speed Internet, notably because downloading iTunes was required, was not a major obstacle. At launch, the iTunes Store was not even available directly on the iPhone. Even today, an iPhone will not automatically retrieve podcasts overnight through the home Wi-Fi network on its own. The iPad tablet still remains heavily dependent on a PC, notably because of its connectivity constraints, and even the MacBook Air struggles to operate entirely autonomously.
Today, most content is still stored locally, duplicated and synchronized with varying degrees of reliability and convenience across computers, media players, and smartphones. However, this logic is progressively being reversed. Today, the web remains transitional : users download and publish content, but the PC still sits at the center of the ecosystem. Tomorrow, the balance will shift toward the network itself : everything will reside online, while users will only keep a minimal “toolset” downloaded and synchronized on their mobile or fixed devices.
Subscription-based music services such as Deezer, Spotify, or Pandora are examples of this new dematerialized model, offering unlimited online access to content, the possibility to combine personal libraries with streaming content, and offline functionalities. These offline capabilities will remain essential for mobility, but within a completely new logic : rather than storing everything locally and synchronizing afterward, the reference point will exist online, while only strictly necessary content will remain stored locally.
Some companies adopted this logic long ago through network-based storage systems combined with a local “toolset” on laptops and remote access through VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). However, these practices have largely remained limited to large corporations and rely on relatively inflexible solutions. The real revolution will come through mass-market consumer offerings, which are progressively emerging.
Access is now possible from virtually any operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux, etc.) using a web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, etc.) combined with a downloadable lightweight client, with highly advanced offline capabilities. Although more complex, Microsoft also offers a similar solution for enterprises, one that already appears to be evolving toward a truly compelling consumer-oriented offering.
Apple offers a single account allowing users to access content from multiple devices : a purchased video will be available on an iPhone or a PC, provided the device has Internet access. Its complementary subscription-based offering, MobileMe, enables the remote hosting of calendars, contacts, email accounts, and multimedia documents.
HTML5, the new web standard, should open even more possibilities in the area of multi-platform synchronization.
Within this new ecosystem, one of the main challenges lies in content management and aggregation : content will be spread across multiple web platforms (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, etc.), each with its own identifiers and passwords. As everything becomes interconnected, identity management and data security become critical. In addition, network instability and connectivity issues make sophisticated content management between the network and devices indispensable (“constant peering, constant sharing”). This represents one of the key challenges for network operators. While they may appear to have lost the battle for content and web services, operators can still capitalize on their customer intimacy to take ownership of these challenges and offer simple and attractive services.
Morand Studer
