corporate software

PC Industry Fights to Adapt as Tablets Muscle In

July 28, 2013 by NewsMaker

Like the mainframe, which was said to be dead decades ago but has remained a meaningful business, the PC will almost certainly cheat death. True, mobile devices like the iPad will continue to gore PC sales. Those mobile devices, though, will most likely never satisfy spreadsheet masters, film editors and other workers who depend on multiple screens and the precision of a keyboard and mouse.

Still, there is a strong view among many longtime tech industry executives that the PC’s relevance will steadily diminish.

“In my humble opinion, the PC as we have known it is in a continuous decline and being relegated to a utility device for businesses,” said Hector Ruiz, the former chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices, a company that makes chips for PCs and other devices.

The mood around the PC industry has become increasingly glum. The business is effectively in a recession, and there is no upturn in sight. During the second quarter of the year, global PC shipments fell around 11 percent, for their fifth consecutive quarter of declines, the worst downturn since the advent of the PC more than 30 years ago.

Intel, supplier of the chips in most PCs, and Microsoft, which makes the Windows operating system on the vast majority of those machines, have delivered disappointing financial results. A major overhaul of Microsoft’s software, Windows 8, did not lift sales and may have made them worse.

The once-mighty Dell, deeply weakened by the PC slump, is mired in a struggle with shareholders over a plan to go private, seeking relief from investor pressure. In their bid to take the company private, Michael S. Dell, the company’s founder, and the investment firm Silver Lake have argued that they would turn the company into a corporate software services provider. A vote on the company’s future is expected this week.

While sales of PCs to businesses remain steady, demand among consumers has plunged, largely because people are instead spending money on iPads, Kindle Fires and other tablets.

Still, a reality check: more than 300 million PCs are expected to be shipped this year globally. That is a lot of widgets for a business that has caught a cold.

Tablet sales are growing explosively. This year, there are expected to be more than 200 million shipments of the devices, which will for the first time exceed shipments of notebooks, the largest category of PCs, estimates Gartner, the research firm.

Steven P. Jobs, the Apple chief executive who died in 2011, predicted several years ago that PCs would become something like trucks, workhorses used by many people but outnumbered by tablets, the cars of the technology business. (The analogy is somewhat undercut by stats: the most popular vehicle in the United States for several years has been a truck, the Ford F-150.)

One theory is that tablets are leading PC shoppers to postpone their purchases of new computers, perhaps by a year or two, but that eventually people will be ready for a fresh machine. “Replacement cycles are being pushed out,” said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research.

A more pessimistic view is that a lot of the consumer demand for PCs will never return. Daniel Huttenlocher, the dean and vice provost of Cornell University’s new New York City technology campus, said consumers began buying PCs in big numbers beginning in the 1990s largely because no better device existed for getting on the Internet.

But the PC, he said, was always better suited as an office machine for the production of documents, presentations and other work. In his view, tablets are better for the consumption of content, whether that is watching Netflix or surfing the Web.

“There are way more consumers than producers, period, even in a world with lots of user-generated content,” Dr. Huttenlocher said.

In the first quarter, 53 percent of computer shipments were to the consumer market while 47 percent were to the commercial market, estimates the research firm IDC.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/technology/pc-industry-fights-to-adapt-as-tablets-muscle-in.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Companies Are Erecting In-House Social Networks

What would Facebook look like without photos of drunken nights out and tales of misbehaving cats? It might look a lot like the internal social network at the offices of Nikon Instruments.

The tone is decidedly businesslike, as employees exchange messages about customer orders, new products and closing deals. And the general rule is that “if you don’t want your company president to see it, don’t post it,” said John G. Bivona, a customer relations manager at Nikon Instruments, which makes microscopes.

As social networks increasingly dominate communications in private lives, businesses of all sizes — from tiny start-ups to midsize companies like Nikon to behemoths like Dell — are adopting them for the workplace. Although it is difficult to quantify how many companies use internal social networks, a number of corporate software companies have sensed the opportunity and offer various systems, some free to existing customers, others that charge a fee per user.

It’s one more instance of how consumer technology trends, like the use of tablet computers, are crossing into office life. Because of Facebook, most people are already comfortable with the idea of “following” their colleagues. But in the business world, the connections are between colleagues, not personal friends or family, and the communications are meant to be about work matters — like team projects, production flaws and other routine business issues.

At Nikon, for example, which employs 500 people in offices throughout the United States, Canada and Brazil, a code of conduct for using the service leaves little room for the idle chit-chat that is pervasive on Facebook.

Still, it can be tricky to transport the mores and practices of social networking into the office.

For instance, some workers prefer to be “lurkers” who read posts rather than write them. Others are just not interested. At Symantec, the computer security company, a few employees initially disliked the idea of an internal social network, but nevertheless used it to air their complaints.

Another issue is how to protect corporate secrets. The systems are generally set up so that companies can determine who sees particular files and who belongs to specific groups on the network. Yet problems still arise over where the data is ultimately stored. Some social network providers use their own servers. But that may conflict with the rules of some potential clients that prohibit storing company information outside their firewall, said Susan Landry, an analyst with Gartner.

Companies that provide social networks respond to the concerns by emphasizing their rigorous security. Still, some offer networks that allow customers to keep their data on their own servers.

And employees may post private information more widely than they should.

“It’s sometimes a disaster,” Ms. Landry said. “It sometimes gets shut down by security or compliance.”

At the same time, even though companies make clear in etiquette guides how to use the networks, missteps occur. For example, at Symantec, a worker posted his cat’s photo in his profile instead of his own. A well-meaning worker at Nikon alerted everyone to apple pie in the kitchen; never mind that colleagues in other offices were not interested.

One of the biggest providers of corporate social networks is Salesforce.com, the online business software company based in San Francisco. It said 80,000 companies use its corporate social network, Chatter, up from around 10,000 when it was introduced a year ago. Yammer, a start-up and also based in San Francisco, said its service is used by more than 100,000 companies, up from around 80,000 a year ago.

SAP, Cisco Systems, Socialtext, Jive Software and SuccessFactors are also pushing their products. Last month, VMware joined the list when it acquired Socialcast, one of the earlier networking services.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b50cf435ca09efa3fbb8f6537eed344f

PC Industry Fights to Adapt as Tablets Muscle In

Companies Are Erecting In-House Social Networks

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