Reinventing the Enterprise Desktop

The Windows-based desktop and notebook computers that your employees use haven’t changed much in a decade. Sure, they’re faster, have a lot more memory and have bigger hard disks. Of course, they mainly have sleek LCD panel displays instead of clunky CRTs. However, those Windows XP and Windows Vista boxes are still 32-bit machines running the same sort of applications they ran under Windows 98. Beyond Wi-Fi and faster Ethernet, their support issues are largely the same, too.

That’s going to change soon, driven by two factors: 64-bit Windows and new initiatives that will drive multithreaded software.

While Microsoft has offered 64-bit versions of Windows for several years, most consumers and enterprise users continue to run the 32-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista. The 64-bit capabilities in modern Intel and AMD processors have sat dormant.

That’s changing. According to Microsoft, consumer pre-installs of 64-bit Windows Vista are exploding. The enterprise desktop may be on a similar track.

Next stop will be new multithreaded applications, both those being built in-house and upgraded versions of commercial software. Thanks to new tools from Intel and Microsoft, as well as new generations of multicore processors, developers will find it both easier and more compelling to write multithreaded code. That will push demand for end-user machines with two- or four-core processors. While that shouldn’t affect support too much, there is bound to be some impact.

After 10 years (or more) of static 32-bit desktops and notebooks, this is a welcome change.

BI and its Its Impact on Organizational Decision-Making

Business intelligence (BI) is an important aspect of an organization’s strategic framework. But what is beyond BI? Some indicators point to business analytics, a progression from BI, as the next step. Business analytics is predictive as well as historical, which requires a cultural shift to the acceptance of a proactive, fact-based decision-making environment, providing organizations with new insights and better answers faster.

Many IT and business professionals still continue to define business analytics in broad generalizations. According to the IDC Market Analysis Report, Worldwide Business Analytics Software 2001-2011: “The business analytics software market comprises performance management (PM) tools and applications and data warehouse (DW) platform software. This software is used to access, transform, store, analyze, model, deliver and track information to enable fact-based decision-making and extend accountability by providing all decision-makers with the right information, at the right time, using the right technology.” Additionally, business analytics is a framework that extends beyond software and systems to include culture, process and performance strategies as well.

IT and business professionals mainly align business analytics with BI products. In fact, more than half of respondents (54%) cited BI as the category of products that first comes to mind when they think of the term “business analytics.” Business analytics may be the next logical step in the evolution of BI. Additionally, 18% of respondents think of PM products, 11% think of the general category of analytics and 13% reported that they do not use the term “business analytics” at their organization.

The top software tools that respondents consider part of business analytics spanned across various areas, including analytics, data integration, query/reporting and performance management. More specifically, seven out of 10 respondents (70%) consider advanced analytics tools, such as data mining or statistical software to be part of business analytics, followed by query/reporting/analysis tools (66%) and dashboards (60%).

Business analytics is broad enough to include capabilities and solutions that benefit a variety of disciplines. Since business analytics is designed to be used by all decision-makers, it is not surprising that almost three-quarters of respondents surveyed (73%) view business analytics as a function of both IT and business. While 21% consider it primarily a business function, 6% consider it primarily an IT function. With business analytics being a function of both IT and business, there is an increased need for collaboration across organizations, as well as the need for supervision by cross-departmental management teams.

Less than one-third of respondents (32%) rated themselves as extremely or very familiar with the product category, and only 10% rating themselves extremely familiar. While more than four out of 10 respondents (44%) are somewhat familiar with the business analytics software product category, 24% rated themselves as not very or not at all familiar. However, respondents cited a number of key benefits their organization derived or expects to derive from using business analytics software, which encompassed various areas of business analytics.

Top benefits included improving the decision-making process (75%), speeding up the decision-making process (60%), better alignment of resources with strategies (56%), realizing cost efficiencies (55%) and responding to user needs for availability of data on a timely basis (54%).

Conversely, there were also a number of challenges noted when implementing business analytics software. Respondents have encountered or expect to encounter problems with data integration with multiple source systems (59%), challenges with regards to data quality (56%) and issues when attempting to integrate with enterprise applications (44%).

The implementation of a flexible and straightforward business analytics framework would alleviate these challenges and provide organizations with the right information at the right time to enable fact-based decisions at every level of the enterprise.

Function of business analytics

Almost three-quarters of respondents (73%) view business analytics as both a function of IT and business. While 21% of respondents view business analytics as primarily a business function, only 6% view business analytics as primarily an IT function.

Netbook: Evolving Category?

Laptops are evolving—and forcing the rest of the computer industry to change

A new class of cheaper, smaller netbook computers might upset the IT establishment this year and potentially usher in new players in a hotly competitive market.

Simple, low-cost laptops are not a new idea. There were several abortive attempts to make them in the 1990s, but big computer-makers soon dropped them for fear that they might undermine sales of traditional laptops. In 2005 a charity called One Laptop Per Child designed an ultra-cheap laptop for the developing world. That inspired Asus, a Taiwanese PC-maker, to develop one of its own, called the Eee PC, which it started selling in late 2007 for $250.

The timing was perfect. A few months later, the credit crunch hit. At the same time, Intel started selling its cheap and power-saving new processor chip, called Atom. By the end of 2008, Asus had sold nearly 5m Eees and all its rivals had jumped on the bandwagon. In total, 21m netbooks will ship this year, almost twice the number in 2008 and more than 15% of the entire market for laptops, according to Gartner, a market-research firm.

Yet as netbooks have become more popular, many of them have also become more sophisticated. Asus’s first Eee PC was a puny device with a screen measuring only seven inches (18 centimetres) diagonally, a midget keyboard and flash memory instead of a hard disk. It also ran Linux, a free operating system. But consumers in the rich world wanted more. As a result, most of the new devices on display in early June at Computex, a trade show in Taipei, boasted at least ten-inch screens, full-size keyboards and sizeable hard disks, and they ran Windows XP, an old version of Microsoft’s flagship operating system. Many models now go for $600 a pop.

Though netbooks have acquired many frills and mutated into new forms, the theory behind them endures: computers do not need to be stuffed with the latest whizz-bang technology if they have a high-speed connection to the “cloud” of services available online. At Computex, a trade show in Taipei, firms showed devices equipped with WiMAX, a new wireless technology that allows for fast, ubiquitous wireless connections.

It is this combination of connectivity and cloud computing that makes netbooks and their successors so disruptive. Some mobile-network operators now throw in free netbooks if subscribers sign up for a mobile-broadband contract. This will put further pressure on prices, since mobile operators have more bargaining power than individual consumers, although it also opens a huge new distribution channel for computer-makers.

More important, netbooks and similar devices could weaken Microsoft and Intel, which have so far dominated the PC industry and extracted most of the profits. To keep Linux off most netbooks, Microsoft has had to discount Windows XP from $40-45 per copy to $10-15.

Intel, by contrast, has so far mainly benefited from the netbook craze, which has created a huge market for its Atom chip. The firm insists this has neither cannibalised sales of its other chips as much as feared nor put pressure on its lofty margins, since Atom costs less to make. Still, just as with Linux, there is a credible alternative to Atom: processors based on designs by ARM, a British firm, which already power most of the world’s mobile phones. Several Taiwanese PC-makers are working on a netbook-like gadget that would be powered by an ARM chip and run Android, a variety of Linux developed by Google for use on smart-phones.

At Computex, Acer announced that it would use Android together with an Intel chip. Other firms are expected to follow suit. Intel is also pushing another version of Linux, called Moblin. Its long partnership with Microsoft notwithstanding, Intel does not seem to care what operating system netbooks use, provided they contain the firm’s chips.

Netbooks are surging. At first, vendors thought of them as a way to sell cheaper, less powerful alternatives to notebooks, but netbooks have gradually come into their own—and now we're almost to the point where netbooks can be taken as seriously as their larger, weightier brethren.

It seems that netbooks, already hot, may benefit from improved functionality. It is unclear if the gradual improvements represent a new generation or simply incremental improvements as the technology evolves. Regardless, that the category is addressing some of the shortcomings of the past, such as “cramped” keyboards, small screens, slow processors, short battery life and too little memory.

The march of devices from consumers to businesses is occurring in the netbook sector. ADNH Compass, a 17,000-employee caterer in the Middle East decided to give workers Aspire One netbooks instead of full-size laptops. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit is that the company’s ERP software manager is in the process of enabling the devices to access SAP applications via 3G wireless. This clearly shows that the netbooks aren't out of their league and are robust enough to support the heavier workloads demanded in business environments. IT managers who formerly scoffed at the idea of replacing laptops with netbooks are taking the concept far more seriously.

The netbook/MID/smartphone/laptop sector is perhaps the most interesting and fun to watch. For one thing, the sour economy means that nothing good is happening in many other sectors.

What do you think? Are netbooks the future? This industry always evolves toward smaller and less expensive. If netbooks can continue to harnass great computing power—as with the Acer AspireRevo—I think there's no stopping them. And that means a lot of PC manufacturers are going to see a lot of upheaval in their business models.