Marketing cliché waiting to happen: Windows on Everything
A Niche in Time
Marketing cliché waiting to happen: Windows on Everything
- By Em C. Pea
- June 01, 2000
It’s been a long time since I bought my first computer.
Pre-eBay, that Babbage fellow was offering a good deal
on a refurbed Difference Engine, but wouldn’t you know
it? I snagged a Commodore VIC-20 instead. Given today’s
state of the art, the VIC was pathetic; but for the time,
the mere thought that I could purchase a computer for
my home for $300 was thrilling, even if there wasn’t much
I could do with it.
Auntie wonders whether we’re at another one of those
points at which the marketplace changes dramatically.
Over the past 20 years or so, players in the computing
space have come and gone, and what’s left, except on the
enterprise server level, is predominantly Windows/Intel
(I hate the W*nt*l contraction!), with Apple in a supporting
player role.
Why does Auntie think another (ugh) paradigm shift is
upon us? Well, the most important resource on your computer
isn’t on your computer any more. You can get onto the
Internet with a PC, a Palm Pilot, a cell phone, several
brands of exercise equipment, genetically engineered vegetables,
a good wok… everything’s Net-enabled these days, and these
technologies are maturing, so that you’re getting reasonably
fast response from them (except the vegetables; they don’t
say too much). PCs are now just one class of Internet
access device, sitting in their own niche. We use them
at home, when we want the additional features they provide,
and we use them in the workplace as ubiquitous desktop
solutions, as well as for servers throughout the enterprise.
We also use our handhelds, whether they’re Palms or WinCE
devices or whatever. We can get news headlines on our
pagers, and sports scores on our cell phones. Some of
the more adventurous among us put up Linux systems for
their reliability, their open-source philosophy, or because
we enjoy the travails of developers trying to provide
the same functionality of the Windows GUI while avoiding
those cranky calls from Bill and Steve’s legal department.
This fragmentation, I do divine, is inevitable, and most
likely a good thing. Yes, especially for MCPs, because
we get to figure out how to get Windows to communicate
and integrate with all these different devices and operating
systems. It’s no small challenge to build an enterprise
from Windows systems; the challenge becomes greater and,
we hope, more rewarding when you need to get your infrastructure
and applications to deliver commodity futures data from
a Unix mainframe through Windows-resident business rules
through a Linux Web server through a satellite link to
Web-enabled display devices implanted on the retinas of
every rancher in the Mountain time zone.
“Windows Everything” and “Windows Everywhere” are empty
exercises in wishful thinking. “Windows with Everything,
Everywhere” is the mantra that will keep the PC niche
healthy and relevant for the foreseeable future, until
the next technological firestorm lets us all go off and
trade commodities from ranches in the Rockies.
About the Author
Em C. Pea, MCP, is a technology consultant, writer and now budding nanotechnologist who you can expect to turn up somewhere writing about technology once again.