Several decades ago I wrote that them main reason for personal computers was for communication. that was before the public Internet. Now, not only is it obvious that personal computing is for communication, but a whole range of industries have grown up in support of that proposition.
Smartphones have lead the evolution and will continue to do so, but tablets, like the iPad I'm using to write this, are the true demonstration. The evolutionary trend is moving faster and faster. Communicating with a device now... Will we still need devices in 10 years.
The proliferation of mobile computers has helped lead to the exponential growth of data centers and thus the need for a refresh of the centralized computing paradigm. Where there has been a move to RAIC in the data center, a case can now easily be made that what needed is not tens of thousands of small servers but hundreds or thousands of very large servers. The re-emergence of the mainframe, but a new type of mainframe. One not dedicated to the running of giant transactional applications. Instead, perhaps just very powerful hardware platforms that can deliver the tens of thousands of servers. Beyond VMs.
I've been studying the large systems I'd ignored in the past and am wondering how these systems can succeed in a market now dominated by simple inexpensive, easy to use, servers. More study is needed.
