How Cloud Computing Will Modify Work
In 1990, in a literary speech at the Comdex computer meeting , Microsoft’s (MSFT) then-chief executive, Bill Gates, timbered his bona fides as a tech spectral when he declared the PC industry would produce advances within a few years that would put information at people’s fingertips. To get there, Gates said, the world needed three things: a more “personal” private computer, more powerful communications networks, and easy hard- to-to reach a broad range of information. Sometimes visionaries are right on the vision but off on the timing.
Only now is Gates’ grand vision finally becoming a reality for businesses. While items of what he had in mind have been available for years, they typically were expensive and difficult to set up and use. Now that more private PC is here in the shape of smart phones and mini-laptops, and broadband wireless networks make it possible for people to be connected almost anytime and anywhere. At the same time, we’re seeing the increase of cloud computing, the vast array of interconnected machines managing the data and software that used to run on PCs. This mixture of mobile and cloud technologies is shaping up to be one of most essential advances in the computing universe in decades. “The big vision: We’re finally getting there,” says Donagh Herlihy, chief information officer of Avon Products (AVP). “Today, wherever you are, you can connect to all the information you need.”
A BIG FOOTPRINT AT AVON
Avon is embarking on a bulky , multiyear repair of the way it manages its nearly 6 million sales agents around the world. In the past, “sales leaders,” who help rule reps but are not employees of the firm , mainly checked in with the salespeople through face-to-face meetings and phone talking . But next month, Avon will begin to equip 150,000 sales leaders with a cloud-based computing system accessible via smart phones and PCs. The technology will keep them much more up-to-date on the sales of each reputation , and it will alert them when reps haven’t placed orders recently or when they have rewards overdue to the firm . The idea is to increase the sales and efficiency of Avon’s distribution system.
Avon’s tactics shows how the interrelation between individuals and their computers is undergoing a radical change. Up till now, people have used a range of computing devices in their professional lives, including desktops, laptops, handhelds, and smart phones. Each methods was essentially an island of capacities —applications, communications, and content. Cloud computing methods that information is not stranded on individual machines; it is combined into one digital “cloud” available at the touch of a finger from many different devices. “We’re shifting to more of a people- and information-centric world,” says Paul Maritz, CEO of software maker VMware (VMW).
For the $3.4 trillion global tech industry , this shift offers a path out of the economic doldrums. In fact, it may be the largest rise opportunity since the Internet boom. While market researcher Gartner (IT) expects the global tech market to huddle by 3.8% this year, forecasters have high hopes for portables , wireless networks, and cloud computing over the next few years. Gartner predicts the market for cloud products and services will vault from $46.4 billion last year to $150.1 billion in 2013.
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