The Next Big Thing

[#1]

Since the inception of this blog back in 2005, we've been talking about the importance of edge computing devices and the movement of more of the business interaction out to the edge. Yesterday's announcement of HP's purchase of Palm shouldn't have come as too much of a surprise - although I was not involved in the purchase in any way. Palm has a range of patents that span the mobile hardware & software space that should strengthen HP.

The movement to a "mobile first" approach from a value generation perspective and everything as a service will be bolstered as well. The mobile device is the computer we always have with us; the possibilities to incorporate its capability are only just being tapped. It can help an enterprise know quite a bit about the context of the individual who is carrying it that can be used to reduce latency and minimize interruptions.

Organizations have been talking about developing products and services that would allow people to work from anywhere, anytime, anyway they.... The only problem is most aren't practicing what they preach. HP definitely seems to have internalized this philosophy (at least compared with when I was part of EDS). The advancement of mobile really does change the way people work and allow them to streamline (and some would say integrate) their business/work life.

We'll see how the various service offerings in the mobile space can take advantage of the purchase as well:

• Mobile Apps Services


• Mobile Info Protection Services


• Mobile workplace services

[#2]

Shane Robison (HP CTO) perspective:

www.forbes.com/.../hewlett-packard-smartphones-technology-palm.html

[#3]

I hope that HP will keep all of us who are still using our various Palm PDAs in mind when developing new products. I'm not a cell phone person and don't see why continuing to have PDA functions should mean having to get a cell phone and pay a monthly service phone carrier fee. I also like to carry it in my pocket and a tablet computing device is too large.

[#4]

You bring up a good point that there are numerous markets out there and people who lives their lives in that market.  Consumer technology is definitely adjusts to the demands from the marketplace. It makes me wonder how many more people are like you.