Friday, September 04, 2009

The "Blue Ocean Collaboration" Replacement for Distributed Personal Computing


The period from (1985-2010) is/was a technology/market era that was focused almost exclusively on the mechanics of enabling "Independent Personal Computing(IPC)". The goal was all about faster processors, bigger disks and more RAM to run ever more complex locally deployed PC applications.

That era is coming to an end. 

We now are transitioning from that IPC focus into an technology/market era that will be focused almost exclusively on maximizing the productivity of what I call "Interpersonal Realtime Collaborations" (IRC). IRC is a hybrid value proposition that results from merging the value proposition of communications technology with the value proposition of computing technology. This IRC value proposition will be important in the professional marketplaces as well as the consumer marketplace. 

The reason for this is, 'computing power' is now becoming both ubiquitous and inexpensive, (true both for distributed as well as Cloud-based computing). With computing power reduced to a commodity it can no longer be the primary/exclusive value focus for computing technology companies who want to build and market premium-priced technology products, software, services. 

A similar disruptive process is happening to traditional voice/video/text communication solutions as standalone "Customer Premise" solutions. They also are commoditizing rapidly and traditional communications companies like Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Mitel, Shoretel, Ericcson, Seimens, NEC, etc. are seeing that erosion in profitability. 

However, the seamless combination of communication technology and computing technology delivered over ubiquitous broadband pipes, that delivers a premium IRC experience, is currently not available widely. But it is something people are starting to demand. Those companies who provide it first will be able to take the initial high margins in this new market. Google is about to launch a big initiative in this area with the Google Chrome OS running on lightweight "netbook" devices.

So what does this mean? The companies (PC manufacturers, Telecom equipment manufacturers, Software companies and others) that refocus most effectively on enabling IRC vs IPC will win the profitability and the marketshare battles. They will win because the best IRC solutions will have the highest customer demand and therefore deliver the highest margins on sales of everything that supports the IRC experience. With realtime communication being elevated in this new era to be a much more critical value proposition the visionary companies have opportunity to to be significant players/leaders in this new IRC marketplace. 

This "IRC marketplace" is an attractive and exciting Blue Ocean into which manufacturers must willing dive head first. 

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