"Baldor Electric Co. and Welch Foods Inc. have much in common. Both are growing, midsize companies with similar-size IT departments. Each uses packaged ERP applications and is run by IT managers who want complete alignment with the business. But when it comes to the hardware running these systems, the companies are polar opposites."
This is a great story.
IBM invented, or at least adopted the idea BACK IN THE 60s that each user of a computer system should have access to an entire computer rather than have to stand in line with a deck of punched cards as they had done in the past.
When the PC came along a lot of us said "so what... we've been doing this for years" and it has really been pathetic to watch the PC industry re-invent one at a time so many ideas which were well established way back then.
The really sad thing is that we are still not there yet. Where is "there"?
Well, the PC world, among other things has finally re-invented the concept of making several computers look like a single computer. Yes, IBM did that already too, sorry folks. But, they did it in a fairly limited way, and of course the machines were very expensive back then. Most of us these these days are sitting with a single machine of one kind or another within a few feet of our monitor and keyboard. "There" consists of eliminating that cable for many people, and eliminating the idea that there is just one PC as opposed to, for example a dozen, or a hundred, or however many you need to do what you are trying to do.
Businesses, in the process of managing their own affairs (think payroll) of course pay for all of this in a big way and the expenses involved are still significant enough that they continually look for more efficiencies. Part of this evolution though is that business keep doing more and more with computers. If all they were doing was payroll, even the largest of companies could make do with a single ordinary PC. I'm speaking of just that one function here, not all the graphical do-dads on data entry screens, etc. Deep down in side the business processes are still rather simple. It's only after you add graphics, sound, video on the front-end, and weather prediction, physics research and massive databases on the back-end that you seem to need ever growing horsepower keep the whole computing infrastructure from imploding.
The nirvana we approach, exemplified by Beowulf clusters, the Google file system, as well as traditional mainframes that can mimic thousands of individual PCs (and of course the SecondLife grid) is that of not having to care what is going on behind the scenes. The user sees a service, or a collection of services presented on their screens and speakers and controllable with keyboards, mice, joysticks and voice controls. Us 3D folks started calling it the "metaverse" about when the book Snowcrash came out (although I don't remember if the term existed before that).
So "there" (too bad that other company used that name) might well be called the Metaverse, as long as those of us who use that name don't forget that there has to be a lot more to it than just changing the clothes on our avatars and building a pretend dream house. It has to be everything, and ultimately, it has to be EVERYWHERE (link).
No comments:
Post a Comment