Forgive me for restating the obvious but the "new computing paradigm" can now officially be summarized as including the connection of various smaller devices (tablets, smart phones, iPods, cameras) via the cloud. Everyone knows this and has known it for at least a couple of years, except perhaps for the executives at HP, Dell, and Cisco. Here are some of the details in an excerpt from a recent article about this topic (see: As Computing Changes, Hewlett-Packard Struggles to Follow):
As the computer industry makes a radical shift to new modes of computing — in the cloud and on tablets and smartphones — Hewlett-Packard, a stalwart of the previous era, finds it hard to keep up. It is not alone in that struggle. H.P., along with well-established tech companies like Dell and Cisco Systems, is contending with a faster-than-expected move by consumers and businesses from personal computers and small racks of computer servers toward mobile phones and tablets that are connected to millions of servers, all lashed together in remote supercomputing “clouds.” The new systems are cheaper and more flexible, which businesses found appealing in a slow-growing economy....So far, however, the industry shift has rewarded upstarts like Amazon.com, which has become a premier cloud provider to business, and Apple, which reinvented itself with smartphones and tablets. The old guard in enterprise computing, particularly H.P., has struggled with a new technology order that squeezed profit margins and made many older products unattractive....
H.P. said it would cut its ranks by 27,000 employees, or 7.7 percent of a global work force of 349,600. Many of the jobs are in the United States. H.P. hopes to save as much as $3.5 billion a year from the restructuring, most of which it would put toward cloud-based businesses, like computer security and analysis of large data troves....H.P.’s results followed similar news from its archrival Dell on Tuesday....Dell reported a 12 percent decline in consumer revenue, and smaller declines in both business and government sales. Dell’s stock plunged 17 percent Wednesday on the earnings report....Earlier this month, Cisco reported a 22 percent increase in net income after its own corporate restructuring over the last year, but warned of falling demand, in part because of Europe’s faltering economy....
Software delivered over cloud computing is typically less profitable, since it is effectively rented cheaply, without a lucrative service contract....Of all H.P.’s competitors, I.B.M. has fared best in the transition to the mobility and cloud world. I.B.M. has bet billions on the cloud-based business of big data analysis. In its most recent quarter, however, I.B.M. reported flat sales but improved profits because of tight management. Ms. Whitman, who took control of [HP) last September, said [the company] had to reposition itself quickly, but also said it would have enough time, since its largest corporate customers would move gradually to full cloud computing. “We’re not lagging in the transition to the cloud,” she said. “The enterprise changes slowly.”
I have been blogging about cloud computing for more than four years. My first notes were posted in early 2008 (see: Cloud Computing in Healthcare: Key Questions to Ask; Finally, A Clear Definition for Cloud Computing). The first comprehensive, clear endorsement of cloud computing for the labs that I have heard was provided a few weeks ago by Sonny Varadan, CIO of PAML, at Robert Michel's Executive War College in New Orleans. The explanation of how major companies like HP, Dell, and Cisco could miss the boat for so long is relatively simple: complacency, habit, and an unwillingness to tamper with the current, successful business model.
When Meg Whitman of HP says that the "largest corporate customers would move gradually to full cloud computing," I agree with her. This is doubly true for healthcare computing which always lags 5-10 years behind other "corporate computing." However, I hope that lab computing will be a little smarter vis-a-vis this technology and show the way. Some LIMS computing has been in the cloud for at least four or more years. I am looking forward to hospital lab computing moving in this direction soon. We need to be delinked from the shackles of the hospital servers -- it's too expensive and too strategically limited.
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