An iPod Moment Is About to Make Your PC Obsolete

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By Rob Enderle
12/08/14 7:04 AM PT
I was at Dell's thin client briefing earlier this week at its
new facility in California's Silicon Valley, and it clearly is
feeling very confident, in light of HP's plan to split its
company.
There really have been only two major players in the thin
client space for a few years, and they are HP and Dell,
but since thin clients require both a specialized client focus
and unique servers, splitting HP along those lines would
seem to make its offering obsolete.
The idea of a computing appliance has been attractive for a
long time, but it still is only a small fraction of the available
market, even though it's been almost 20 years since the
concept was first announced by Oracle and Sun.
I think that is about to change -- largely due to the actions
of firms we typically don't connect to this effort -- but I
still think we need a big iPod/iPhone/iPad-like trigger
before the market pivots and this shifts from being the
exception to the standard.
I'll dig into that and close with my product of the week: the
new hub from Insteon.
Why Thin Clients Initially Failed
The lack of adoption of thin clients really came down to
three things: the networks weren't ready; the technology
wasn't ready; and the companies that were trying to drive
them into the market couldn't spell "PC." I don't think you
can replace something unless you have a deep competence in
what it is you are trying to replace, and this last thing was
the overarching problem with the early efforts.
I can remember a conference at which I chaired a session
with CIOs talking about PCs, and Sun execs in the room
went off about how Microsoft sucked and its Sun Ray One
thin client was the wave of the future. I was taken aback a
bit, because they were supposed to be in the room
observing, not pitching their products. Almost as one, the
CIOs ripped into the Sun execs, pointing out that as bad as
Microsoft was, Sun's solution was far worse -- being far
harder to deploy, delivering horrid performance, and being
higher in cost with an unacceptably low compatibility with
existing software.
That event sticks with me, because it is one of the few
times I've seen a vendor step into a room of customers
convinced it had a product that couldn't be refused only to
find out it instead had a product that couldn't be sold.
Thin client development split into two camps: those that
were focused on providing blade PCs and those focused on
using servers as the processing platform. The first group
could provide a near-identical PC level experience but had
huge cost disadvantages. The second, while far less
expensive, had a massive performance disadvantage.
Ironically, HP was the only company adopting both
concepts -- but rather than creating an interesting blend, it
seemed to pit the two against each other, massively
reducing its potential market.
Cloud, MU-MIMO, and Grid
Performance, availability and cost remained the big
impediments to making thin clients work. Using servers
could reduce the cost, but servers simply weren't designed
to handle the processor loading required by someone
wanting PC-level performance. When the market stalled
on Windows XP, there was a big opportunity to close the
gap, but that opportunity appears largely to have been
missed. However, there are three advancements that are
coming together -- nearly accidentally -- that should do
the job.
Nvidia Grid is really the first server technology designed
from the ground up both to be sold to others and to provide
the level of performance required by PC users moving to a
client model. Grid now has moved to Dell, VCE and
IBM for VDI solutions, and it currently is unmatched in
market for this use.
Qualcomm last week announced MU-MIMO , which
performs like a switched wired network, increasing
wireless performance to rival wired. Thin clients are
heavily dependent on network performance, and requiring a
wired connection to get adequate performance was the
second huge cause of the poor performance that crippled this
class.
Finally, while OnLive showcased that a cloud service
offering a hosted PC desktop was possible, it is firms like
Mainframe 2 that are taking this more effectively to
business, albeit small business, allowing a solution to move to
areas likely to be able to adopt it more quickly.
By the end of next year, when the MU-MIMO products
should be broadly available, virtually all of the impediments
will be gone -- but you don't flip a market by removing the
impediments, you flip a market by providing unique user-
focused benefits.
Cloud Client
The benefit that thin client technology should be able to
provide is that you don't have to carry hardware -- what
you need is always with you. Dell and others have
experimented with dongles -- basically HDMI-based
USB stick-like devices you can plug into TVs and
monitors to give you your desktop -- but they have two
problems. First, you need to carry input devices, and
second, you need to have a monitor.
If you have to carry a keyboard and mouse and search for
a monitor, that isn't very convenient, and it is unusable on a
plane. Chromebooks are another approach to this. You have
a laptop experience that moves with you, but in the end,
you're too often going to miss the other stuff you can use a
laptop for, and you lose the idea of not carrying any
hardware.
While I was thinking about this, I was holding my Shield
tablet . What makes the Shield tablet very different is that it
was designed to be connected to, and bundled with,
Nvidia's Grid back end -- but for gaming. As a tablet, it
is a fully functional device even when disconnected -- but
when connected, it provides PC-level gaming and can be
plugged into monitors and connected to Bluetooth keyboards
and mice to become a PC.
I think this form factor is far closer to what we are likely
to find compelling -- though a more portable keyboard and
mouse solution, or a different but still acceptable form of
input would improve adoption significantly.
Wrapping Up: Waiting For The iPod/iPhone/iPad
Before the iPod, hard drive-based MP3 players were a
tiny fraction of the market. Before the iPhone, you
couldn't seem to give away big screen smartphones. Before
the iPad, tablets were successful only in some verticals.
The PC is a user-focused device. It initially was carried
to success by user-focused firms like Apple, Atari and
Commodore. Even Microsoft started as more of a user-
focused company. I think the same path will be required for
thin clients.
For thin clients to take off, I think we'll need a service like
Mainframe 2 or OnLive that can address both consumer
and business customers, because our PCs do address these
needs for most users. We'll need a client device that can
embrace both and offer a more compelling solution.
Working in favor of this are improvements in voice
command, AI (systems like Siri, Cortana and Watson),
and massive improvements in flexible displays, which can
give us large screen devices we may be able to put in our
pockets.
Whoever comes up with this first at scale likely will own
this segment -- and that could be Dell or Apple, Microsoft
or Google, or someone we have yet to identify (which is
becoming more and more likely).
Product of the Week: The New Insteon Hub
Both of my homes use Insteon to automate lights
throughout. This isn't an inexpensive solution, but because it
uses both wired and wireless technology and creates a more
Apple-like experience, it remains my personal favorite.
However, the user experience hinges on the Insteon Hub ,
a centralized device that provides both the automation and
security for the system, which now includes security
cameras. Insteon recently brought out a new version of the
Hub and released it at a price just under US$40, which is
pretty amazing for something that traditionally cost several
hundred dollars.
The Hub was always cloud-connected but now it is easier
to set up and far easier to use. For instance, now you can
see both the switch controls and the camera feed, so you
actually can see the lights go on and off remotely. If you
want to operate and see into your home remotely, Insteon
has made improvements to how you drill through your
router, so you can get this stuff working more easily.
Given the new Insteon Hub has made my life easier, it is
my product of the week.