Google’s public face, Eric Schmidt is not someone that is easily surprised, or amazed for that matter. But the technology industry has the tendency to shock even the most experienced of campaigners.
And when you are talking about the recent shift towards mobile computing, surprises are a daily deal.
In his speech at the Gartner Symposium event in Orlando recently, the chairman of Google expressed his thoughts on how tablets have started changing the very core of the enterprise environment. What has pretty much been set in stone these past few decades is now changing — rules are being rewritten.
In fact, Schmidt is of the view that the classic big software company model is about to expire.
Tablets are slowly but surely seeping in into all areas of life, including business, and the man said he was actually taken aback for not having noticed that something like this would happen:
“I was actually surprised by this. I didn’t call this. Would the phone replace the PC? I figured employees would be using a PC and a phone. But it was the tablet revolution. It looks to us like the majority of enterprise computing is being done on mobile devices, in particular on tablets. That broke the old model.”
Well the old model is what large software companies like Oracle, SAP and even Microsoft use to push their software at enterprises, earning impressive revenues while doing so.
But out of these three Microsoft has been one of the quickest to adopt — Windows 8, Surface and Azure, are three living proofs that Redmond saw this coming. Not as early as it would have liked, but the company saw this coming alright.
All Comments
The use of tablets in Enterprise is being overblown. Not many people are using ONLY tablets in enterprise. They might issue tablets as laptop replacements, but that’s about the only way they’re being used in enterprise as a PC alternative. For most people a tablet is mostly being used in place of a work PDA or smartphone. Many are using them as an additional interface like as a control pad, and others are using them as a supplementary device.
Ray I absolutely agree.
The whole line about tablets replacing desktop computers completely has been MASSIVELY overblown.
Until tablets become dockable (like the new Surfaces) and are able to have 1GB hard drives etc, I’m not holding my breath.
There are certain things that only a laptop or desktop can do efficiently.
I would even go so far as to say in many enterprise environments, desktops will continue to be essential. They’re proven. Cheap. Easy to repair. Don’t have to worry about batteries. They aren’t easy to lose or steal. And they almost never get dropped and break. 🙂
I agree with this. I’ve worked in a lot of places where there was NO WAY a tablet would suffice, such as marketing and accounting departments. In no circumstance are corporations going to allow off-premises customer databases, either. Those are worth a lot of money to keep in-house. Eric Schmidt has been drinking his own Kool-Aid, it seems.
@The_Norseman:disqus, you nailed it too!