'Personal Cloud' to replace PC by 2014, says Gartner

I think its gradually becoming this way but in America the current infrastructure only allows this in some areas and its not widely adopted as a practice yet. Also ISPs and their lobbyists are always looking for ways to curve the benefit in their direction mostly since broadband allows many different services to be accessed without the ability for companies such as Comcast to get "their share".

My wife rarely uses her iMac she pretty much does everything on her iphone and ipad. Photos are shared via Facebook, sms, or email. Bills are paid on her PC but our bank came out with an "app" lol.

I use Steam for most of my game purchases, Google apps for everything light and I want shared with my wife or others.

Music is Slacker, Pandora or iTunes radio.

TV shows over the air HD or buy shows on Xbox or PS3.

etc, etc

And who is going to control this?

ISP's implementing data caps because they are pushing us to a tiered system like long distance used to be because they want bigger revenue to help offset infrastructure expansion costs.

veritas_libertas

I love these right around the corner prediction. Please...

The closest I've come to cloud computing is using Gmail, Google Docs, and Hulu. I certainly don't pay for cable or a phone line, though I do use VoIP.

I know there are some cloud computing certifications, but what about for the different operating systems and hardware?

Apple Iphone certificate and Ipad along with the OS
The other hardware manufactures of tablets and smart phones along with the OS's that accompany them

Do you think these will surface eventually? Maybe they have and I just haven't seen them advertised yet.

jesseou812

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I love these right around the corner prediction. Please...

The closest I've come to cloud computing is using Gmail, Google Docs, and Hulu. I certainly don't pay for cable or a phone line, though I do use VoIP.

Prediction is very hard, especially about the future. Yogi Berra

The day I store everything in the cloud, it will be a cold day in hell... My download is 10Mb, my upload is 1Mb - I am due to change ISP to 100Mb download, 7Mb upload. But if you think I'm going to start uploading my stuff using 7Mb upload or buying all of my stuff again so I can host it in the cloud, you've got another thing coming. I think they will co-exist because it does make sense to bring some stuff around with you.

veritas_libertas

I should mention that I do have an offsite backup of all my data, around 100GB worth of stuff. That being said, there is no way I would use it for regular access and storage purposes. I live in the country so my ISP's speed is not that great.

I use Dropbox for school work and I love the desktop application. I have all my classes in folders and subfolders and I can access it on my iPad with GoodReader and sometimes if I forget something I can grab it on my phone. Pictures I use Picasa and videos are converted into Youtube for friends and family members.

I don't store exclusively online but backups of important stuff is there.

Webmaster

N2IT wrote: »

I know there are some cloud computing certifications, but what about for the different operating systems and hardware?

Apple Iphone certificate and Ipad along with the OS
The other hardware manufactures of tablets and smart phones along with the OS's that accompany them

Do you think these will surface eventually?

"Eventually" maybe, for example if Microsoft gets a large share of the pie and Google, Apple, and/or others get the impression Microsoft's certs have had a very positive influence on that. I think it is more likely tablets and phones will become more common in exam objectives/domains of existing exams/certs (A+, Windows 8 exams, GIAC), i.o.w. be treated as just another "PC"/mobile device/host/user/client.

Tablet and phone hardware in particular usually doesn't require maintenance (at least usually not by IT pros), just replacement, so I don't see options for certs like the old Compaq hardware technician certs from tablet manufacturers either.

It would not surprise me a lot if Apple adds an iOS device support cert some day, simply because they are a cert vendor already and do both the hardware and the software. Not so sure something like that will have much value except for at Apple (sotres/shops). I wishfully think there will be iOS & Android dev certs some day.

powerfool

I hope we don't move to the cloud that quickly, especially not with the relatively few players out there. Personally, I want my data secure (and I will do what I need to protect it). With ISPs imposing download limits, I cannot see too many people doing this that have a decent amount of data.

WafflesAndRootbeer

N2IT wrote: »

I know there are some cloud computing certifications, but what about for the different operating systems and hardware?

Apple Iphone certificate and Ipad along with the OS
The other hardware manufactures of tablets and smart phones along with the OS's that accompany them

Do you think these will surface eventually? Maybe they have and I just haven't seen them advertised yet.

Windows 8 will have certs for mobile platform use as will Ubuntu's mobile OS as both of them are hybrid desktop/mobile products. iOS has nothing for itself so far as I know but Apple has mobile access and configuration certifications for their desktop OS that tie into using iOS to access networked Apple desktops and of course you can get certified with whatever application of choice is used by a business on iOS if applicable. Android isn't possible to get certified on as there is obviously no standard for it by design but you really only need to get certs for various Android business apps (Citrix and such) that are multi-platform to get by.

ImTheKing

N2IT wrote: »

Oh, you still have a computer with a hard drive?
You still have a landline?
You still have a USB drive?
You still pay for cable TV?
Where do you park your horse and buggy again?

Well, other than that horse and buggy....

NetworkingStudent

N2IT wrote: »

'Personal Cloud' to Replace PC by 2014, Says Gartner | Cloudline | Wired.com

Enjoy

One of the posters in the article wrote.

It's here now:
My computer - Chromebook
My phone - Android
My backups - Rackspace reseller, accessible by both above.
My TV - A screen streaming from a computer, but I digress.
Oh, you still have a computer with a hard drive?
You still have a landline?
You still have a USB drive?
You still pay for cable TV?
Where do you park your horse and buggy again?

Everyone talks about the cloud this.. and the cloud that, but all in all in my opinion it’s a big scam. Companies want to make money off of you, and using a fancy term such as “the cloud”, is just another way of doing it. Why have software installed on your computer, when you can pay per use? (think office 365) Also, I believe the new Windows 8 Server will make use of a lot of cloud services for backup.
I just don’t like putting my data in the hands of another company, so I do have a problem moving to cloud storage.

How secure is your data?

I don’t think the cloud will replace the PC ,but what I don’t understand is that some people will pay $600.00-$800.00 for an Ipad(/android tablet) or Iphone, android phone, yet they don’t have a computer.

As far as appleI thought I read somwhere they were going to charge after a user stored a certain amount to their Cloud Services....

NetworkingStudent wrote: »

Everyone talks about the cloud this.. and the cloud that, but all in all in my opinion it’s a big scam. Companies want to make money off of you, and using a fancy term such as “the cloud”, is just another way of doing it. Why have software installed on your computer, when you can pay per use? (think office 365) Also, I believe the new Windows 8 Server will make use of a lot of cloud services for backup.
I just don’t like putting my data in the hands of another company, so I do have a problem moving to cloud storage.

How secure is your data?

I don’t think the cloud will replace the PC ,but what I don’t understand is that some people will pay $600.00-$800.00 for an Ipad(/android tablet) or Iphone, android phone, yet they don’t have a computer.

As far as appleI thought I read somwhere they were going to charge after a user stored a certain amount to their Cloud Services....

Why is that so hard to understand? Most people don't really need a computer in the home. Before laptops were for mobile workers but the past few years due to dropping prices I tell people who don't like a case and monitor taking up space to just buy a laptop.

Besides gaming I really don't use my home computer for anything. I use the browser and that is it.

tpatt100 wrote: »

Why is that so hard to understand? Most people don't really need a computer in the home. Before laptops were for mobile workers but the past few years due to dropping prices I tell people who don't like a case and monitor taking up space to just buy a laptop.

Besides gaming I really don't use my home computer for anything. I use the browser and that is it.

Agree 100%. If you can't see that PC's and Laptops will be record players and wheel to reel in the not so distant future I don't want you on my strategy/design team.

powerfool

Developers aren't going to be switching to tablets... even those that develop for tablets. They have to use a full-scale OS to develop and compile on, for now.

I guess that might be the new killer app for tablets... a cloud IDE... you write the code on your tablet, compile in the sky, and voila.

I dunno, though... I still like using a normal keyboard.

powerfool wrote: »

Developers aren't going to be switching to tablets... even those that develop for tablets. They have to use a full-scale OS to develop and compile on, for now.

I guess that might be the new killer app for tablets... a cloud IDE... you write the code on your tablet, compile in the sky, and voila.

I dunno, though... I still like using a normal keyboard.

Well I know most top end development companies are developing for tablets/smart devices first and then PC/Laptops. We had some employees attend a conference in Orlando. Keynote speakers were Former President Bill Clinton, John Lithgow, CIO of Facebook, some C from twitter and few other high level employees from other companies. The Facebook C mentioned that all development of Facebook was going through HTML5 and was built to first test out on smart devices and tablets. This was mentioned by other development shops as well. There are more handheld devices and tablets on the network than Laptops/PC's. There are more hand held devices than people with electricity in the world. These devices are continually gaining traction and will replace the PC/Desktop IMHO.

As far as your tablet goes you can utilize a dock, external keyboard, and monitor to give yourself the "desktop feel" if you so choose. My wife has a Ipad2 and she uses a bluetooth external mouse and a logitec keyboard that the Ipad2 plugs into. It works well and if so chooses we can plug the device into the 27 inch external monitor. However like tpatt mentioned most of the time we use it to order food, purchase items, or just surf which we just relax on the couch and do it from there. No keyboard, no mouse, no external monitor. Infact there is an app on the ipad where can launch PPT files and create presentations from the tablet. I'll be honest I was skeptical when I first saw the app, but to be honest it works pretty well.

dave330i

tpatt100 wrote: »

Why is that so hard to understand? Most people don't really need a computer in the home. Before laptops were for mobile workers but the past few years due to dropping prices I tell people who don't like a case and monitor taking up space to just buy a laptop.

Besides gaming I really don't use my home computer for anything. I use the browser and that is it.

I use mine to run VMware Workstation 8. Until a tablet has the hp & app to run nested VMs, I'll be keeping my desktop.

DevilWAH

dave330i wrote: »

I use mine to run VMware Workstation 8. Until a tablet has the hp & app to run nested VMs, I'll be keeping my desktop.

But you could just use Amazon or other cloud to run you virtual machines on. OK for now this is a bit expensive although not as bad as you would think, but we already have free on line storage, it wont be long before you will get free hosting for app and servers. Indeed its already cheaper to run a server on Amazon cloud than it is to by the hardware and software.

The only thing I don't like with cloud is the possibility of losing connection. using caching and replication helps with this but then you lose the cloud benefits. I would also want to be able to use mutiply cloud providers and sync data between them (so if one fails i do not lose it all) before I would be happy to go mostly cloud

N2IT wrote: »

As far as your tablet goes you can utilize a dock, external keyboard, and monitor to give yourself the "desktop feel" if you so choose. My wife has a Ipad2 and she uses a bluetooth external mouse and a logitec keyboard that the Ipad2 plugs into. It works well and if so chooses we can plug the device into the 27 inch external monitor. However like tpatt mentioned most of the time we use it to order food, purchase items, or just surf which we just relax on the couch and do it from there. No keyboard, no mouse, no external monitor. Infact there is an app on the ipad where can launch PPT files and create presentations from the tablet. I'll be honest I was skeptical when I first saw the app, but to be honest it works pretty well.

As far as casual computing, yes I think tablets will be the way of the future. But your ignoring the whole desktop gaming sector - MW3 grossed 750 million in 5 days, don't know what BF3 did - not to mention sales for NVidia, AMD & Intel to run those games. If tablets were going to overtake desktops & laptops then where have HP, Dell and others been? They have let Apple take a lead and so far Samsung seems to be the only major one doing damage to them.

The first hard drive was designed in 1954, we are still using that design today more or less. SSD drives are the way of the future but look how long it took for that to be replaced. And with tablets and laptops they have less power than desktops, fact, it's a heat issue - that's why I'm using water cooling on my desktop. Plenty of people with vested interests are predicting the downfall of the desktop but are totally ignoring the fact that I spend $200 on a processor alone - and if you think Intel or AMD are going to be happy with providing a $50 processor for a tablet that's just not going to happen for me.

They will co-exist, cause I don't want to lug a desktop or laptop around while I'm out but I do want processing power for when I'm home or in the office.

veritas_libertas

N2IT wrote: »

Agree 100%. If you can't see that PC's and Laptops will be record players and wheel to reel in the not so distant future I don't want you on my strategy/design team.

LOL, and how are you going to type all your business documents? Yes, if you dock your tablet that is one thing, but a total ALL out replacement for everything? Not going to happen for at least another ten-years in my estimate. Laptops becoming near exclusive? Already happening where I work for almost everyone.

I'm not going to say that things aren't changing. Some of our users have embraced tablets, but they mostly use it for notes, some editing of documents, and longer e-mails. They would be very irritated if they had to exclusively use tablets.

DevilWAH

Asif Dasl wrote: »

They will co-exist, cause I don't want to lug a desktop or laptop around while I'm out but I do want processing power for when I'm home or in the office.

Welcome to OnLive is where gaming will go. The powerhouse of a data centre to run your games on your tablet! might not be quite there yet but it will get there.

and Amazon elastic cloud gives you the flexibility of huge power resources as and when you need them.

I played with AMazon at a former job carrying out mathematical modelling. Its Ideal, you use a low powered cheap desktop to develop your modles, and then **** it on a cloud server with a few hundred gig of ram, 48 CPU's and pay a tiny amout of what it would cost to have the hard wear on site.

Most connections are plenty fast enough to send screen updates, and with a real cloud solution this is all you need, all your music,videos you should never need to copy down to your device. its down loaded direct to your cloud though the big fat pipes of the providers. With the likes of Crome OS it only ever hits your screen as a screen update.

One thing it will impact massively on is pirated software and media. No more getting around DRM or application licencing, this will all be controlled by the cloud provider. And I think this is the biggest stumbling block, The cloud is great for you average jo, who only uses the web and maybe office.

But for the tec savie the cloud will require a lot of rethinking in how we do things and bring in a whole new level of restrictions, and for many things we do the cloud offers no advantage, indeed in some thing it does not really support, so I would have to become hybrid and why do that when having a single non cloud device works fine for me. But it needs the tec savie to get online and use and improve it so it is a better service for the average jo...

bit of a chicken and egg situation, but I do see the tide turning, businesses are starting to really understand the cloud idea, and taking bites at the bits that will work for them. I think in another 10 years we will have drifted in to the cloud with out ever really driving it.

dave330i wrote: »

I use mine to run VMware Workstation 8. Until a tablet has the hp & app to run nested VMs, I'll be keeping my desktop.

Again how many people do that? How many people who drive a car know how to fix it or even care? The mechanics do of course and they will always need to know because they provide the service. There will always be developers and people who need "desktops" to do that stuff but 99.99 percent of the PC user base do not need that. The browser took over the OS for pretty much all of our computer needs.

I am thinking big picture and down the road here not "now" even though its becoming obvious the "now" is here and people are adapting and changing.

Asif Dasl wrote: »

As far as casual computing, yes I think tablets will be the way of the future. But your ignoring the whole desktop gaming sector - MW3 grossed 750 million in 5 days, don't know what BF3 did - not to mention sales for NVidia, AMD & Intel to run those games. If tablets were going to overtake desktops & laptops then where have HP, Dell and others been? They have let Apple take a lead and so far Samsung seems to be the only major one doing damage to them.

The first hard drive was designed in 1954, we are still using that design today more or less. SSD drives are the way of the future but look how long it took for that to be replaced. And with tablets and laptops they have less power than desktops, fact, it's a heat issue - that's why I'm using water cooling on my desktop. Plenty of people with vested interests are predicting the downfall of the desktop but are totally ignoring the fact that I spend $200 on a processor alone - and if you think Intel or AMD are going to be happy with providing a $50 processor for a tablet that's just not going to happen for me.

They will co-exist, cause I don't want to lug a desktop or laptop around while I'm out but I do want processing power for when I'm home or in the office.

Intel or AMD would love to secure the exclusive contract to provide the processor to Apple, Dell , Samsung for their devices. Console games outsell their PC counter parts several times to one over all and the hardware developers want in on getting those long term contracts to provide the GPU and CPU to a gaming console. They are a specific spec and they churn out millions of them rather than the constant one ups of the desktop markets.

Heck remember that whole Windows for Gaming? Even Microsoft ignores that pretty much by paying for Xbox exclusives and pretty much ignore the PC market for gaming. I think the big reason is control of a central unit vs the openenss of computers.

The trending is indicating that the business is moving towards IPAD and other tablet devices. The last company I worked for did a pilot for 200 IPads in the environment. It was a hit, infact it was so successful they returned their laptops for redistribution. Keep in mind these were salesmen who essentially use 3 pieces of software. Email, CRM application, and Excel viewer. This iniative is still being driven hard and it looks like all their sales people will be going to the tablets.

I think the transition will become transparent or close to it. With office 365 you utilize your browser to update Excel, Access, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote files. This will give the tablets the functionality to work on business documents and upload them back into sharepoint or other storage venues. Most environments encourage backing up documents on the Homedirs right now anyway.

Absolutely DevilWAH, there is a market for cloud services and it will increase year-on-year. But I have a friend who pays for online storage and frankly he could buy a 2tb hard drive and put it in the cupboard and have way more storage/backup, less chance of hackers getting his stuff, and none of the stuff he needs to bring around with him, as far as I can see it's just to say "Oh I store my stuff in the cloud." great, but he's wasting money and if he wants to access all of the data he has download it all again? Where is the sense in doing that?

He could just use a NAS with RAID 5. There are benefits, don't get me wrong - I don't do any WebDev but I understand the whole databases in the cloud thing - major advantages. But if I had a dollar every time someone banded the "cloud" word around in a way to make them sound more intelligent I'd be a millionaire - when you press some of them, they have absolutely no clue what they are talking about. "I have had a hotmail account since 1998, that's storing my email in the cloud right?" I love using that one...

If we learn anything it is not to ignore the signs and try to fight it but instead study it, try and predict the trends and find out how to steer our IT careers to better benefit ourselves and our families.

For example don't think desktop support is going to give you a career to retirement instead study the trends and look around. My wife's work at the university got rid of their last dmv desktop a few years ago. They have terminals that run Citrix. I was at the DMV last year and noticed the Citrix logo come up on all their terminals same at the grocery store.

If your a software developer or want to get into the field it might be a good idea to read up on iOS and Android development.

I am focusing my side studies on security auditing for mobile devices and cloud storage and how those impact standards and regulations.

I just think its a smart move to acknowledge what is happening and adapt to the change.

Asif Dasl wrote: »

He could just use a NAS with RAID 5. There are benefits, don't get me wrong - I don't do any WebDev but I understand the whole databases in the cloud thing - major advantages. But if I had a dollar every time someone banded the "cloud" word around in a way to make them sound more intelligent I'd be a millionaire - when you press some of them, they have absolutely no clue what they are talking about. "I have had a hotmail account since 1998, that's storing my email in the cloud right?" I love using that one...

But before Hotmail became mainstream I was always using an email program to retreive my messages. Before that I was logging into a green screen app to access my school messages. Web based email was the initial step into the idea of online email and storage rather than connecting to the server to retrieve the mesage and read it offline.

tpatt100 wrote: »

Intel or AMD would love to secure the exclusive contract to provide the processor to Apple, Dell , Samsung for their devices. Console games outsell their PC counter parts several times to one over all and the hardware developers want in on getting those long term contracts to provide the GPU and CPU to a gaming console. They are a specific spec and they churn out millions of them rather than the constant one ups of the desktop markets.

Yes, I know consoles are more popular for games but there is a reason why desktops are prefered for FPS - it's a better experience. If that was not the case then PCs as a gaming platform would have given up on long ago and we would just focus on consoles - that never happened.

tpatt100 wrote: »

If we learn anything it is not to ignore the signs and try to fight it but instead study it, try and predict the trends and find out how to steer our IT careers to better benefit ourselves and our families.

Totally agree, I am due to take a VCP course in a few weeks time, and finish a number of exams up until I take a break over summer. I'm still sceptical and I know there are many advantages but as far as I can see there are way too many people banding this word about - not least my Uncle - who knows nothing about IT and doesn't know his arse from his elbow.

DevilWAH

Asif Dasl wrote: »

Absolutely DevilWAH, there is a market for cloud services and it will increase year-on-year. But I have a friend who pays for online storage and frankly he could buy a 2tb hard drive and put it in the cupboard and have way more storage/backup, less chance of hackers getting his stuff, and none of the stuff he needs to bring around with him, as far as I can see it's just to say "Oh I store my stuff in the cloud." great, but he's wasting money and if he wants to access all of the data he has download it all again? Where is the sense in doing that?

I always chuckle when people say it more open to hackers. no its not if you chose the right one, some allow you to run client side encryption which means its possible more secure. second even if not as long as the data is encrypted in transit and you use a reputable host then they will ave plenty more security than the standard home network has. NAS box in the cupboard, you get malware on you desktop and its possible the most hackable storage in the work. And that's with out the fact that if your house burns down you lose your data to.

As for having to download it all over again, this is not CLOUD, this is storage. Google Doc's is a cloud service, you never download the information to your device, Google servers render the content to active webpage and send that. This is when the "cloud" come in to its own, it is not a storage technology or idea. Online storage is online storage has been around for years and will continue to beso. The cloud is to do with manipulating data remotely, removing the CPU and Memory requirement from the local machine and in the process increasing the flexibility and efficiency.

RobertKaucher

veritas_libertas wrote: »

LOL, and how are you going to type all your business documents? Yes, if you dock your tablet that is one thing, but a total ALL out replacement for everything? Not going to happen for at least another ten-years in my estimate. Laptops becoming near exclusive? Already happening where I work for almost everyone.

I'm not going to say that things aren't changing. Some of our users have embraced tablets, but they mostly use it for notes, some editing of documents, and longer e-mails. They would be very irritated if they had to exclusively use tablets.

I don't understand... What's the dif between a docked laptop and a docked tablet? Provided the hardware can keep up, there is no reasson that we cannot get the same utility out of tablet devices that we do out of laptops and combining that with the cloudification of apps there is no reasson it won't take 1/2 the time for tablets to take over like laptops have to this point. I think you guys forget what it was like when laptops were getting close to the price-point and hardware capabilities of what was required by the average user. Once laptops hit the $500 mark it took less than a year for their sales to exceed that sales of desktops at the consumer level in retailers like Best Buy. It's the knee of an exponential curve and people who are sitting at that knee only see the slow tail behind them. They think, "Oh, this will never be able to happen in two years." And then *pow*! If you had looked back at laptops sales back then and tried to predict the sales of laptops based on what had gone before you might have though 50/50 laptop desktop was reasonable but it literally went from 1/3 laptop 2/3 destop to 2/3 laptop 1/3 desktop over a period of months.

No one is going to forsake working with a conventional keyboard and monitor for having a tablet. Thinking that is what people are suggesting is just silly. I honestly believe that what is in the pipeline right now is going to astound us in 5 years with the rapidity it will take over and it will take over because it's better and more convenient than what we have now.

But all that is off topic. I've already moved most of my personal stuff to the cloud via Amazon's cloud drive. $20 a year and I have unlimited music storage for my MP3 and M4 files. Not just the ones I bought via Amazon, either. All of them. And that leaves 20 GB for my documents and other personal files.