Death of the PC?

Published 30th May 2007

Death of the PC?
Author: Ian Ryder, Managing Director, appiChar Ltd. www.appichar.co.uk

The Microsoft PC-based IT world has enjoyed a long period of riches based largely around replacement cycles that have meant that there is always a new project on the horizon. Those days could now be at an end – and about time too if we’re not to be up to our elbows in land-filled IT equipment.

A number of factors are conspiring to take us into a new era where businesses will expect to get far more use out of their hardware investments and the technology is only going to help make this a reality. The factors include:

- Slowing pace of processor improvements, improved hardware reliability resulting in even a fairly basic PC giving more than the usual 3 years of productive life.
- Microsoft have been running out of gimmicks to make software upgrades seem desirable for a long time. The launch of Windows Vista and Office 2007 might be the final confirmation of this as the lack of initial interest shows.
- Web services and the return of centralised processing / thin-clients don’t follow the old upgrade patterns and don't need the latest developments on every desktop. Organisations can even resurrect those old computers in the cupboard and provide more a than acceptable computing experience.
-Remote working is encouraging the use of these technologies which are then spreading into the general office environment as IT and business managers see the benefits and become more comfortable with relying on them. As more people expect to be able to access their data on the road of work from home, this will only become more widespread.
-Environmental concerns are forcing organisations to take responsibility for the disposal of old equipment and to limit unnecessary consumption
-As the country becomes more dependent on ever more power-hungry technologies our supplies of fossil fuels are declining which is likely to result in ever-increasing energy prices and other incentives to reduce demand. At the same time people are waking up to the effects on their energy use on global warming / climate change.

To survive in this new environment IT providers are going to have to adapt quickly and those that have relied on traditional PC-replacement cycles for a large chunk of their business will have to innovate or get left behind. The winners in this new environment should do even better as more of the IT budget is spent on value-added services rather than replacing aging desktop equipment.

Of course, none of this is new – people were writing off the traditional IT department in 2000 when application service providers (ASPs) would render everything that had gone before unnecessary. They might finally be right, just 7 or 8 years late!


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