Most people, driven by the news and Apple themselves, believe that the iPad was the first ever tablet, but the start of the tablet revolution was much earlier than that. Though I used and enjoyed the HP tablet shown below even I was not aware of the Fidler Tablet until I saw this picture. What this shows though is that it is not only the idea that needs to be right, the market needs to be ready for the idea. This has showed up many times in the technology market (Remember the Apple Newton?) because of the speed of technology development.
In 2003/4 when I started talking about people having a allowance to buy their own computer for work it is clear that though people liked the idea and thought it to be the right way to go. They really were not bought in to making it work though. Nowadays this concept has been labelled BYOD and everyone is talking about it, but are they any more ready for the idea?
I work in an environment where it is probably more important to embrace this concept than any other yet it is clear to me we are far from ready to truly make it work. This is not because we are not willing, or because we do not have the skills. It is simply that the products and the environment do not yet make this work easily.
Take for example licensing, if I am using my own tablet for the companies work who should own and pay for the software? If the software I am using is not properly licensed who should be responsible, me because I own the computer or my company because they need me to use it? I would argue if I am given an allowance to equip myself I should use this to buy the right things and be compliant and thus I am responsible. From a software companies point of view though recovering costs for stolen software from an individual is much more difficult.
I believe this is what will drive software more and more towards the cloud making it less dependant on the hardware. That way the company will pay for the access to the on-line software and the employee can use it for as long as they work for the company. Many software companies have already started to go this way and with browsers becoming more and more in touch with the hardware on the local machine it will not be too long before the majority of software is delivered this way. Those companies that cannot deliver their software through web techniques will provide gateways to arrays of instances running their software. To most users this will be indistinguishable from using the web techniques.
This is really just as well as in the last couple of weeks Microsoft, Google and Amazon have unveiled new tablet devices that will inevitably replace the PC for the majority of users.
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