Recently
I had a discussion with some fellow from
CIOs, both the Public sector and Universities, about this summers news on the
"End of the PC era" and "Bring your on device". Some are calling this Consumerization of IT.
Naturally
this is very interesting and a potential ground shaker in many IT-organizations
around the globe. Control is a key word in many enterprises, not only to
regulate information security but also to better provide support to end users.
At many universities this control has never truly existed, in many
"standard platforms" the end user is Administrator (or should be) and
can alter programs and settings at will. This should mean that universities are
well equipped to handle this shift if/when it truly arrives.
So will
this be realized and if so when? I guess there are a few things that point in
this direction. My first example is the news from Nvida CEO Jen-Hsun Huang who claims that Windows 8 will be able to run
Windows Phone 7 Apps (http://www.winbeta.org/?q=news/nvidia-windows-phone-7-apps-will-run-windows-8).
If this is true I would assume these apps will be bought through the App Store
that will be in Windows 8.
There
also seem to be devices that tries to close the gap between "tablet"
and "pc". An example is Samsungs Slate PC as presented at the IFA in
Berlin (http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/tablets/samsung-slate-pc-series-7-is-a-tablet-and-a-notebook-1007398). Some argue that the entire release of Windows 8 is about removing this gap. And then we have iPads, where the gap has already been removed.
Both
these examples points in the same direction. The end user will loose control
over the operating system (OS) of their device. The OS will be deployed over
the internet and controlled by the manufacturer of the OS. Much like Apple do
in the case of iPads. I think many end users will welcome this development,
especially if this mean the computing device will be more stable and fast.
This
means that the end user will provision apps on the device, and these will
naturally vary from individual to individual and be a combination of personal
and business apps. But in order to help
the end user it would be great if the business can provision (and pay for) apps
and also perhaps even restrict access to some apps or documents.
An
interesting video on this topic is from Microsoft, "How consumerization is
changing the role of IT " http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nNe8BbXDj8 (take a few minutes to watch that video).
So in the
potential future where the lines between personal and professional life has
been blurred or removed and the devices
comes with a prepackaged OS; It will rain Apps and Devices, it will virtually
pour down. We can only embrace the risk and the following change and help usher
both the end users and our vendors in a direction that are somewhat safer and
perhaps less chaotic.
