5 Reasons your personal computer is dead

The reign of the personal computer as the sole access device is coming to a close, and by 2014 the “personal cloud” will replace the computer at the centre of users’ digital lives.

“Major trends in client computing have shifted the market away from a focus on personal computers to a broader device perspective that includes smartphones, tablets and other consumer devices,” said Steve Kleynhans from research company, Gartner.

“Emerging cloud services will become the glue that connects the web of devices that users choose to access during the different aspects of their daily life.”

The past two years have been a whirlwind in the client computing space, leaving many organisations asking what comes next and what the environment will look like in five years.

“Many call this era the post-PC era, but it isn’t really about being ‘after’ the PC, but rather about a new style of personal computing that frees individuals to use computing in fundamentally new ways to improve multiple aspects of their work and personal lives,” Kleynhans said.

Several driving forces are combining to create this new era. These megatrends have roots that extend back through the past decade but are aligning in a new way:

Megatrend No. 1: Consumerisation — You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
Users are more technologically savvy and have very different expectations of technology. The internet and social media have empowered and emboldened users. The rise of powerful, affordable mobile devices changes the equation for users. Users have become innovators. Through the democratisation of technology, users of all types and status within organisations can now have similar technology available to them.

Megatrend No. 2: Virtualisation — Changing How the Game Is Played
Virtualisation has improved flexibility and increased the options for how we use technology. Virtualisation has, to some extent, freed applications from the peculiarities of individual devices, operating systems or even processor architectures. Virtualisation provides a way to move the legacy of applications and processes developed in the PC era forward into the new emerging world. This provides low-power devices access to much-greater processing power, thus expanding their utility and increasing the reach of processor-intensive applications.

Megatrend No. 3: “App-ification” — From Applications to Apps
When the way that applications are designed, delivered and consumed by users changes, it has a dramatic impact on all other aspects of the market. These changes will have a profound impact on how applications are written and managed.

They also raise the prospect of greater cross-platform portability as small user experience (UX) apps are used to adjust a server- or cloud-resident application to the unique characteristics of a specific device or scenario. One application can now be exposed in multiple ways and used in varying situations by the user.

Megatrend No. 4: The Ever-Available Self-Service Cloud
The advent of the cloud for servicing individual users opens a whole new level of opportunity. Every user can now have a scalable and nearly infinite set of resources available for whatever they need to do. Users’ digital activities are far more self-directed than ever before. Users demand to make their own choices about applications, services and content, selecting from a nearly limitless collection on the internet. This encourages a culture of self-service that users expect in all aspects of their digital experience. Users can now store their virtual workspace or digital personality online.

Megatrend No. 5: The Mobility Shift — Wherever and Whenever You Want
Today, mobile devices combined with the cloud can fulfill most computing tasks, and any tradeoffs are outweighed in the minds of the user by the convenience and flexibility provided by the mobile devices. The emergence of more-natural user interface experiences is making mobility practical. Touch- and gesture-based user experiences, coupled with speech and contextual awareness, are enabling rich interaction with devices and a much greater level of freedom. At any point in time, and depending on the scenario, any given device will take on the role of the user’s primary device — the one at the centre of the user’s constellation of devices.