Gartner Goes Out on a Cloud Limb
How does an analyst firm get attention? By making bold predictions and hoping we won't check back to see if they come true.
Gartner is the king of this game. It's made more predictions than Carnac the Magnificent! I remember when the company estimated that the cost of just managing a PC would take around $10,000 -- and this was back when $10,000 was real money!
Now the company claims that in two short years the PC will be essentially irrelevant.
What are these analysts doing, channeling Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison, circa 1990?
It said the personal cloud would make the PC about as necessary as fins on a donkey. All your apps and data would reside in the ether for you to retrieve through a phone, tablet and even that outdated  PC.
Here's the problem: You can set up pivot tables on a cell phone, and you can't write a 20-page proposal on a 10-inch tablet with a touch key pad. And all the hard core apps for hard core productivity run on either a PC or a Mac. Tablets, phones and even netbooks don't replace anything -- they just give you an extra option.
And what enterprise in their right mind would let data be stored in personal clouds and accessed by a willy nilly assortment of devices? One that doesn't mind going out our business, I reckon.
The PC is becoming less important, but news of its death has always been greatly exaggerated.
Should we do more to hold analysts' feet to the fire when their nonsensical predictions fall flat? Say what you will at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/23/2012 at 1:19 PM