if year > 2013 then PC != Personal Computer The abbreviation 'PC' will soon no longer stand for 'Personal Computer', but 'Personal Cloud'. Come 2014, the latter will be where consumers keep their digital content, not the former. So says Gartner, a market watcher, reckons what you might call 'PC 2.0' will be ushered in by legions to tech-savvy punters already used to …
Amen!
My reaction to if year > 2013 then PC != Personal Computer was "Will it fuck".
That's what companies want to steer you towards because control = power = harder to switch providors = a chance to regularly charge people to access their own stuff.
2013 or no, in Moiety Towers essential services will be as local as possible; using hardware that I control and can see from my comfy chair if at all possible. Remote companies with an off-switch to my essential services are not -and never will be- a viable option; and I don't care if looks cheaper initially.
...in 2014 and beyond there will continue to be large numbers of people who are not "tech-savvy punters" who do not define their existence by "operating online through social network tech" and remian militantly indifferent to the possibility of tweeting the colour of their new shirt/latest turd/*insert pointless bollocks here* 24/7 from every location on the planet.
And I will be happy to count myself one of them. And my PC will continue to be a physical box of standard components.
</rant>
So, let me see I'm going to put my personal IPR, and content on someone elses servers, probably a US company who will not hesitate to hand it over to the US government, or another part of their organisation. The RIAA will vet your music, and Video content and then demand proof you actually own a copy.
Their T&Cs will naturally ensure that you have surrendered your ownership of anything vaugely useful to them.
By the time regulators catch up, it'll be too late.
This very tech savvy IT Strategist, Solutions Architect and Legally minded IT won't be putting his content on someone else's cloud. Do Gartner really believe that crap.
Indeed, anoher ideal world solution to a world that is far from ideal and proven by the fact that we all don't have the latest kit and we dont all have portable terabyte internets.
In many ways google wave highlighted the ideal/reality situation nicely.
As for "cloud" stuff, I see a birght future in the offsight backup market, eventualy. But until you can use external storage with the kind of garantee's that you can get to your data in so much assurance that there is some law that protects your data in the event the company goes tit's up or the like. But hey, accountants like to gamble over taking there inhouse IT advise I hear.
Also anybody who uses the term PC 2.0 as well as deserving a dry slap with a old X-Terminal, twice if they were around in the 80's and used the term synergy. In addition if they ever use the term paperless office, they should be given a ASBO for being within 10 feet of any toilet paper.
You would think that the Cloud would be a great thing to use for a secondary off-site backup. However, I recently had a bad experience with this that highlights the basic problem of the Cloud in general. A remote backup provider just "went away" quietly without sufficient notice and no clear indication from the local client component that the remote service had gone away.
Fortunately, someone was being diligent and double checked things. Otherwise a really nasty situation may have ensued.
Any form of outsourcing is a loss of control. An external service could be interrupted suddenly for a wide variety of reasons. 3rd parties (see Apple iCloud) also like to get in the way.
Everything gets smaller, comms get better, everyone has thier own IP address, loads and loads of redundant PC's at home -- the 'cloud gets smaller'.
You just have a 10TB mini-server at home and as most of the carrot for clouds is 'personal access and storage' (until phones and slabs get huge storage) then only thing you need for off-site is a daily or weekly dump.
I reckon that there is the 'panic now' sales pitch where the near future is not considered - or if it is then it's conveniently ignored. USB sticks are getting smaller and bigger at the same time.
I thought 'Tech Savvy' people were the sort that understood what all this technology really meant and wouldn't touch this idea with a bargepole. 'Gadget Junkies' might fall for it.
For my part, my digital content will remain where it is - on CD or DVD. Anything good enough to rip (that I own, of course) will stay local on my Personal Computer.
Fuck the cloud, I say.
I agree with several of the comments here, where it comes down to ownership of data and possession of the same. I host a private cloud of my own, based on VMWare ESXI & Ubuntu, and do have plans to expand its capabilities. However, I'm as tech savvy as they get, and I'm not about to host any of my private data or services on some other system outside of my complete & total control. While the OEMs are rushing to follow Gartner's lead, manufacturers of custom PC parts will continue doing business as usual for so long as there are customers. If that means harvesting PC scrapheaps to keep my network alive then so be it.
I'm no fan of tablets, nor all of the new under-powered so called PC replacement technologies. While I love my Zotac ZboxHD ID41, its only about 60% as capable as my primary workstation, which was custom built, in-house. No... I'm looking more toward server-room / datacenter equipment for my lab & network nowadays, even if that means buying refurbished systems from Ebay stores.
What happens if the cloud rains and your data goes by by? What if are working on some thing that has stay in country , how do you know which country it is in. What if you live in the UK and you upload some thing pro Nazis? Then it gets hosted on a German cloud server. Remember the Aussie that hosted a pro Nazis web site in Oz ? He land in the UK and Germany wanted him.
I challange that finding. I have never been impressed with the Gartner group.
"The cloud" is nothing more than a buzz word for the old idea of putting your data on somebody elses servers. One need look no further than Amazon, to see how seriously they take security / encryption, or at Megauploads.com to see what happens when some corporation or agency decides to put the hoster out of business. What happens to your valid and confidential data? Whos hands does it end up in?
...if by that, they mean a series of attached bulk storage that you set up to face the net under certain circumstances, then yes I can see this happening. Things like Dropbox and Box are handy for those little things you tend to pass back and forth (program files, unclassified data files, etc.), so it has its uses, too.
But as for the reason I used the icon, I'm going to lampoon it. "Won't someone think of the BANDWIDTH?" Especially with wireless providers who are mostly going tiered such that truly unlimited (lies--blocking tethering IS by definition a limit) is out of reach for most of us. The rest? Well, we start counting our kilobytes. How can more and more remote storage match up against less and less bandwidth with which to transfer it all?
It's not like our internet access could ever go down, temporarily denying us access to our stuff. Even if the unthinkable happened, nobody would mind not being able to access any of their stuff for a few hours or days.
We all have unlimited bandwidth, so there will be no problems handling the surge in content streaming (and there's no per-byte fee on mobile data either, so you can't go broke accessing cloud storage*).
Cloud companies have perfect security, so our content will be safe in the cloud - and there's no chance whatsoever that these companies could have financial problems and take our data with them into bankruptcy.
Our politicians are enlightened, and have already passed laws that will protect our rights to the data we put in the cloud, so we don't have to fear that it could be turned over to authorities without a warrant, and our privacy will likewise be safe, as it's enshrined in law.
The terms and conditions will be written in a clear and human**-readable format, too, so everyone will know exactly what they're getting into.
Oh, wait......
* This is why phones with small internal storage that come with large cloud storage services to make up for it are a joke.
** As opposed to lawyer-readable
Not gonna happen until you pry my cold deal hands from my personal property/computer.
Yeah sure I want to put my data and info out on a "public Cloud" where it's not protected by the laws of home and hearth, where anyone can just hack the cloud to get at it, where anyone with a take down order can kill the server it's on. Sure, that's reliable and safe.... NOT!
Here's my biggest issue with the idea of "Cloud Computing".
Clouds evaporate, easily. Just like Cloud Computing there is nothing physical to rely on, only smoke and vapor just like marketing speak from Gartner, Microsoft, Google, et al. All the promises about uptime and backup are just hot air when all of your info blows away in the night.
At least if it was on your PC and it disappears, there is no one to blame but your self.
In this case, the worlds greatest liars and prevaricators are blowing even more smoke than usual up our collective shorts, trying to make us rely on "THE CLOUD" so we have to "subscribe" to a service so we have storage that is "always accessible". I have hard drives in a computer at home for that.
Anyone remember when you had a photo album to show the grandparents? Now you gotta have "Facebook" 'cuz not even your phone holds enough pictures any longer?
between what Gartner calls 'tech savvy' and what the dyspeptic, asocial, arrogant and cynical crowd at El Reg call 'tech savvy'.
Granted the "I wouldn't do it so anybody who does do it is an idiot" stance might be self-comforting but it appears that it doesn't hold much sway with the rest of the world.
Yep. People here often (usually?) forget that they're a vanishingly small percentage of the market. Product designer don't say, "Wait, hardcore IT guys will think this is stupid; take it out". And hardcore IT guys don't seem to be capable of anknowledging that other people have different priorities or desires - or, remarkably, condemning them for at once wanting to do stupid-thing-A and condemning for choosing a product that will do stupid-thing-a instead of smart-thing-b.
That said, I thing Gartner is full of shit. They can file this next to "turbine cars are finally ready", "solar power is practical", and "rotating media is dead" in the "Yearly failed predictions" drawer.
I have to say, Reg commenters have the bizarre capabilty of saying things I agree with in a way that makes me want to disagree with them. I think that the 'cloud' is an obnoxious and useless buzzword, but the sheer personal venom against it here makes me want to go sign up for the first water-vapory service I can find.
I just hope to god there isn't a thread here full of people savaging Yanni albums.
How on earth can anyone ever think that I'd want to store stuff anywhere except under my absolute personal control?
How many of us are actually so desperate to get to our data on a moment's notice that we are simultaneously unable to remember to carry it with us and yet happy to pay someone else to carry it? I'm not even thinking about privacy/government issues - the whole concept is ridiculous.
But sadly the bosses will lap it up in their droves.
For us living in the realy world won't touch this load of crap with a bargepole.
We should take this time to work up our excuses for those very same bosses when your Cloud provider/Network provider/Jcb Driver messes up and suddenly your business had sod all access to your company data for hours or even days.
Total and utter failure that will become the next 'biggest thing since sliced bread'.
"your business had sod all access to your company data for hours or even days"
Which means that disaster recovery from cloud failures are going to become Big Busine$$ for slimy consultants in the next few years. Fools and their money, y'know.
"Hi, I'm Gavin, your personally assigned sector specialist for cloud disaster recovery. I'd like to present our strike team. Please say hello to Cipher, Droid, Pus-ball and Chancer. We're here today to workshop you through our Cloud Replication Assurance Program which will introduce the bleeding-edge approach to maintaining copies of your Intellectual Property on cloud infrastructure under your direct control..."
I must practise saying that with a straight face. I smell a business opportunity.
So the 'recovery' company takes your data and bungs it on (hopefully) another cloud 'Well sir, it was advertised as a separate cloud but it had been remnamed by various re-sellers as they placed thier own value-added to the product".
The more it's spread ,the less secure it gets.
Sod it - just hide it in a movie file and torrent the thing - pick it up later by downloading the torrent.
It's been kept safe in thousands of homes across the planet.
Some excellent input there. I'm thrilled to be working with you all.
The answer, er, Kane, is that although it comes with a dice, it's not 24-sided - it's infinitely-sided! Our new SphereDice (tm) has ben designed for seamless integration with our value-added services. It's shaped to reflect the nature of the cloud itself, where all sides are the same and however you look at it, you're presented with the same unified holisitic user experience. And it comes preloaded!
A great start there, thank you Cane. Right then, shall we proceed to look at the optimum resource model?
1) While my cable upload speed has been steadily increasing over the years and is now 3Mbps, most DSL plans in the area have 512kbps upload yet even on the high tier plans.
2) Bandwidth caps. Try having 3 or 4 kids with a strictly enforced monthly cap.
3) Data privacy. A few people still care.
There will be those who will continue to work when there is no network connection. These will use 'proper' computers with built-in software and storage! There will also be a few who require confidentiality.
Gartner can shove off into their own smelly little cloud.
...the /major/ negative impact MegaUpload has left on /legitimate users/.
Lets not kid ourselves; it wasn't all file trading; many people actually used MegaUpload to store their own private stuff; pictures, sound snippets, etc, etc. while thinking they were safe. This secure feeling was partially triggered by the fact that people actually paid to use the services of MegaUpload, thus providing a sense of security / reliability (that's how it works for some people).
Well, we all know what happened. Some people even lost important pictures and other material which they never bothered to put onto their own computer(s) or storage because why bother? It was always right there on the Net. And lets not forget the obvious: most (manual) backups usually happen "tomorrow".
And that incident has got a lot of people thinking, a lot more than the author gives them credit for I think. Storing your stuff in the cloud is nice and easy; until someone throws the switch and then the castle comes crumbling down.
Whereas your own "old fashioned" home PC will simply keep on running (provided that your HD doesn't give out).
The trouble is, cloud storage services are under attack right now from the RIAA/MPAA via the US Govt. so who's going to want to risk losing all their files if/when their choice of cloud service provider gets hijacked under the auspices of 'taking down teh piratz'?
If the current MegaUpload debacle should teach us one thing, it's to keep the main copy of our important files local and only use the cloud as a possible secondary backup to our usual local backups.
For now the 'cloud' (or rather 'third-party-controlled remote storage') is a non-starter for anyone serious about not losing their data as collateral damage in spurious DMCA takedowns.
So I don't know about post 2013, being a 'cloud' computing world. At the rate things are currently progressing with this corporate posturing over the control of information flow, post 2013 is more likely to be a world without even an open internet.
My data, the apps I use and the operating system stay here where they're not reliant on a shoddy internet connection, the whims of some remote unaccountable cloud company or the ability of the office tea boy to not un-initialise the logical volume on the SAN upon which they reside by accident.
That way I can pretty much guarantee 24x365 access.
"So says Gartner, a market watcher, reckons what you might call 'PC 2.0' will be ushered in by legions to gullible eejits who fancy themselves as tech-savvy punters because they can find the power switch nine times out of ten and who already used to operating online"
There, fixed it for 'em.
This is all very well but assumes connectivity. I've just returned from the States, and for me connectivity didn't exist. There was no WiFi in the state park I was in, data roaming is an eye watering £9 per MByte and when I looked around Walmart for data sims all I could find was sims that charged $15 per day for 1GB
The operators aren't in a rush to improve matters which makes it dangerous for a traveller to keep stuff in the Cloud. Since one of the selling points of cloudy access is that it allows you to get access to your data wherever you are, the lack of support from operators is a big minus, but of course Gartner, in their rather narrow minded blinkered crystal ball gaze probably haven't taken this into account.
I know it's been said, but Gartner, idiotic as they may be, are hardly foolish for focusing on the 99.999% of consumers who don't regularly travel to remote locales. In this context it's fairly clear that 'wherever you are' means 'NYC or Seattle or Las Vegas or Paris', not 'NYC or Lahore or Abuja or Kabul or that bit of Interstate 88 in upstate NY between exit 11 and exit 40'.
And, honestly, you can probably get on the net fairly easily in Lahore or Abuja. Kabul and I88 are a bit touchier, though.
We technical types will become elite again, as everyone puts their crap into the cloud and gets nothing done with it because all they have is a stupid bloody tablet to access it with and it can only do email, calendar, misunderstand your speech and angry birds and the other 50% of it only works in the USA.
No-one will know what applications actually are any more ;o)
Putting my rates up in 2013!
Nope - data will still be on my local hard drives.
So I am supposed to keep 100GB of pictures and nearly a terabyte of video material on a computer I have no control over?
Yes nearly a terabyte, and I have not finished.
Using DV compression, 1 hour is 14GB approx, so 2 hour 10 minute tapes from 1980s are about 30GB.
And I am not compressing more than that, until I need to.
I mean we already had a bit of such a bubble in 2000 when suddenly many free webmail providers burst. The same will happen with other companies.
Such things always come in waves. We are currently in a wave towards centralization of IT, but the next one will be in the other direction.
I am sick and tired of abbreviations being hijacked for the latest fad. We fought hard to establish our abbreviations. Many computer companies died for them ... Tandy, Tiny, others beginning with T.
It was bad enough when politicians stole it for Political Correctness, now our own industry is stealing it again.
Well no more! This is where we stand and fight for our abbreviations! We shall establish a standard set, and all others shall abide. Are you hearing me Reg? Don't think I haven't noticed your headlines awash with the latest abbrevicreations! You're on notice as well.
...half the people here are saying that people, being idiots, will undoubtedly lap up the Cloud PC 2.0 whatever the hell, and the marketers will clean house.
...and the other half are saying that Gartner are idiots, couldn't predict their way out of a wet paper bag, and nobody will ever possibly fall for this bogus cloud shit because nobody needs it (supplying as proof their personal edge case, natch).
...and sometimes both of these in one post.
So, which is it?
Is Gartner correctly predicting the lumbering of a clueless herd of consumer cows?
Or is Gartner losing the plot, because even lumbering clueless consumer cows are smart enough to not send their shit to someplace called Akamai and like where is that anyway the Cayman Islands or something, like a tax haven thing?
I'm genuinely curious.
You've nailed it. I'd go for the former; I think IT pros do lose sight of the fact that they're in a minority.
The cloud does sound seductive to the technically clueless, and even more so to characters who think they're technically switched on because they can write a macro in Excel and animate a PowerPoint slide.
On that basis, Gartner are correctly predicting the latest manifestation of human stupidity.
I think the answer is 'both' and we've been over-simplifying things. In my earlier post I was guilty of this when I referred to 'Gadget Junkies'.
The reality (as demonstrated to me by my own children) is that there are clueless consumer cows and clued-in consumers. My children are gadget junkies and are fully adapted to the modern world. They love it all and happily use multiple gadgets to access material and to socialise. But they are also well aware that they cannot trust external systems for long-term storage. They keep their stuff on their local PCs and back it up on external hard drives.
So Gartner will probably be right, but only up to a point. And we will be right, but only up to a point.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
