Editorial Articles

Technology might have moved on in the past thirty years, but we don’t appear to have learnt much in the intervening period

A bright sunny July in 2009 a user requests the assistance of an engineer: she can’t log on to her machine and nothing works! There is nothing calm about the user, as “everything” is on her pc. The engineer for his part is immediately concerned that the pc hasn’t been backed up in a while and the user is now starting to “hover”. Several failed boot attempts later confirms the hard drive is failing and whilst attempting to recover the data, the drive dies for good. The situation goes down hill rapidly with accusations of incompetence by the user blaming the engineer for losing the data and the engineer criticising the user for failing to backup her machine. There are few alternatives available other than the spectre of many, many hours ahead rebuilding the users computing working environment and making good on months of lost emails and killer presentations.

As hardware functionality increased in the 80’s and 90’s we began to associate having everything loaded locally on our own personal computer with a new found freedom, connecting to the company network only to download emails and interface with the proprietary corporate applications. This new found freedom also lead to the demise of the professionally run data centre with its clean, air conditioned, environmentally controlled computer room and staff of data centre professionals ensuring everything was backed up, upgrades were controlled and maintenance was scheduled. The past twenty years are littered with tales of lost data, lost machines and frustrated users.

With today’s network capabilities we need no longer be constrained by cables or network speeds, computing needn’t be such a sorry tale. The era of centralised processing has come of age and the network needs to support it have finally arrived.

Hosted Applications, Software as a Service, Cloud computing; all are available today as the Corporate Computer Room has been replaced with highly efficient Data Centres – equally available to the Sole Trader as the Corporate giants.

Network access has only a few smalls steps left before universal network access of one description or another is available in the vast majority of locations in the UK; allowing network dependant devices to take the lead, usurping the ubiquitous laptop. Software as a Service is slowly picking up momentum consigning office productivity suites (MS Office) to history (together with the several hundred pound cost) and server based applications capable of being run from virtually any location; the simplicity and independence of the 1970’s computing era might be back and better than before.

With a simple netbook; in fact with any Internet accessible device, users can access the core product set needed to conduct a days business (email, IM, word processing, spreadsheets …) and when need demands, rental access to more specific applications (CAD, Project Management, Graphics Applications) is available for as long (or short) as needed.

With ‘netcentric’ applications and on-demand functionality there is nothing the user need carry with them, and little more than the job in hand to focus on.

Do you really need MS Word installed on you local machine, can you live with the online equivalent?

Do you need to carry an expensive laptop, with over 8000 being stolen daily in the UK?

Does your business need to pay the average £5000 annual cost of support and maintenance for a laptop , together with its productivity suite and client applications?

With everything required held remotely, in custom built environments; with data backed up professionally daily and with resilient alternative platforms available within minutes should the worst happen, do we really need all the material baggage of 90’s computing?

Shouldn’t the IT user be nostalgic for the good old days of hassle free computing – bring back the DEC I say!

Author: Paul Bateman, Service Manager Datacenta Hosting Ltd