I have discussed before why thin client will be popular again in my previous blog. Nevertheless, probably, Ubiquitous Computing will be the destination. Mark weiser, the father of Ubiquitous Computing has given the idea of 'Ubiquitous Computing' in early 90s. He believes that 'Ubiquitous Computing' will be the third wave of computing after mainframes and PCs (Weiser, 1996). 'Ubiquitous Computing refers to the trend that we as humans interact no longer with one computer at a time, but rather with a dynamic set of small networked computers, often invisible and embodied in everyday objects in the environment' (UbiComp 2007).
Ubiquitous Computing will be the destination. But now how far are we from it?
Mark Templeton, CEO and president of Citrix Systems shared the company's vision of Ubiquitous Computing; he helps customers shift from distributed computing to application delivery service and the IT roles will change dramatically over next five years in response to the forces shaping today's business environment (Ramos 2007 p.26).
He lists out 5 factors driving the IT trends:
Consolidation - workers are required to share all their information
Ubiquitous Computing will be the destination. But now how far are we from it?
Mark Templeton, CEO and president of Citrix Systems shared the company's vision of Ubiquitous Computing; he helps customers shift from distributed computing to application delivery service and the IT roles will change dramatically over next five years in response to the forces shaping today's business environment (Ramos 2007 p.26).
He lists out 5 factors driving the IT trends:
Consolidation - workers are required to share all their information
Regulation - governments and industries holding business more information accountable so the organization must find a way to easily control and monitor information access
Disruption & globalisation - high mobility of work force will need the delivery of applications from any endpoint, under every access scenario.
Echo generation - tech-savvy enterprise IT users will demand application access to variety of wired and wireless communication links
Templeton (2007) makes a conclusive statement that '... I guess what really saw us through is increasing relevance of our basic thinking about enabling people to work from anywhere over any type of connection'. This is the desire of people for getting Ubiquitous Computing ready. But there are still many issues waiting to be resolved. Broadband and wireless infrastructures are the basic requirement in the cities. Security is another important issue we can afford to ignore.
To be continued.
References
Ramous, L 2007, ‘Right place, right time’, Network World Asia, vol 3, no 4, pp. 26-27.
UbiComp 2007, 'What is Ubiquitous Computing?', 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, Innsbruck, Austria, viewed 21 May 2007, <http://www.ubicomp2007.org/scope/>.
Weiser, M 1996, 'Ubiquitous Computing', viewed 15 May 2007, <http://sandbox.xerox.com/ubicomp/>.
