OC CIO Minutes August 12, 2010

1993-2010
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
August 12, 2010 meeting

Present: Tina Haines, Sean Brown, Vinu Gurukar, Jeff Hecht, Jennifer Curlee, Jim Sutter, Ashwin Rangan, Dave Phillips

RJTCompuquest are moving their offices at the end of August. The next OC CIO meeting will be at the new RJTCompuquest office, 18301 Von Karman, Suite 5000, Irvine, CA 92612.

The following have volunteered to introduce topics through October 2010:

9/9/10 Microsoft road map Hicham Semaan
10/14/10 Next generation WAN Jim Sutter

We still need topics and speakers for November and December.

Topic: What’s “new” at the Desktop

Tina Haines started at the beginning – the 1st desktop computer was the Altair 8800, made by Ed Roberts, who died on March 31, 2010. It retailed for $439 in 1975. It was the platform on which Allen and Gates developed their software and launched Microsoft. The Apple Computer was established on April 1st 1976. Gartner says that there are more than 1B PCs in use (9.6 % are MACs), heading to 2B by 2014; 180M will be replaced this year, and 35M dumped in landfills. Tina’s slides contain distributions by region and corporate purchasing trends. There are a variety of end user devices in play, from desktops, laptops to smartbooks, netbooks, to a variety of smart phones. A Google executive forecasts that smart mobile devices will make PCs “irrelevant” in about 3 years – our group did not agree – but Gartner does forecast about 1.2B in use by 2013. iPADs do fill a need in corporations, and the number shipped is growing, but there is no enterprise device management at this time. The factors driving change include the need for mobile access to everything, especially with SaaS, cloud computing, virtualization, and the promise of broadband everywhere. Green technology consciousness is also driving change especially in manufacturing where 70% of PC life cycle resources are used. This is driving the growth of Zonbu – a small 5 lb. PC which sells at $280. TCO is a factor as costs increase with age, especially after 3 to 4 years, when you might be thinking of refreshing, and the lower energy consumptions of laptops might be another reason to drive the move from desktops to laptops. Some of Gartner’s predictions are interesting – by 2012 20% of businesses will own no IT assets; Facebook will become the hub for social networking; by 2013 mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common web access device; by 2014, 3B of the world’s adult population will be able to transact electronically. The prognosticators are divided on whether PCs will disappear, especially any time soon.

We asked those assembled for their reaction to these trends.

Jennifer is looking at Windows 7, and finds that many of their desktops have to be upgraded if they want to use the Windows 7 software capabilities. Otherwise they will have to stay with the old. What will probably happen is a mix and match. They are also looking at outsourcing their Help desk but not sure that will help, because they often have to go and see the problem to fix it.

Jeff was concerned about security, but Windows 7 does come with inscription. Laptops use less power but cost more. Monitors are the biggest part of the cost of desktops. There are problems with smart phones, so they won’t be pushing IP emails to anyone on iphones. Jeff mentioned HIPPA requirements, and the security agreements that they have to sign.

Carmella suggested that these concerns vary by industry. Their concern is to provide the widest possible access for all of their students.

Ashwin was last with B of A, where everything was locked down. They had rigorous device control, and you could only have access to certain devices. But things change quite quickly and iphones were introduced 3 years ago. The quality of voice modems in mobile phones has to improve for them to be perfect as input devices. At Edwards, there is no concern for TCO, and are not thinking about phones as a computer replacement device. They are standardizing on Windows 7 in a 3-year replacement lifecycle.

Vinu added that the divide is between content creation and content consumption, and that may decide what type of remote device you need.

Jim said that at some companies, the infrastructure person is in charge of both mobile devices and desktops. In those cases, the view of the future is Windows 7 mobile. The mass of data is created elsewhere and is heavily transaction oriented. Others may consume the data for analysis.

Thank you, Tina, this was another great presentation and very active discussion. Tina's slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio