It's become a given that enterprise technology now advances at a snail's pace when compared with consumer technology. That the size of the gap is expanding ever more rapidly seems clear from the coverage of the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
No Jitter's coverage of CES comes from Phil Edholm, founder of PKE Consulting, who discovered trends that I'm very sure will not be part of your typical enterprise deployment anytime soon: visualization, augmented reality, Ultra-HD. Phil barely even has time to get to the one buzzword that seemed ubiquitous: wearables. (If I see one more stock or news photo of some millennial with that Oculus Rift box on his face....)
Phil argues that we may be nearing Peak Technology for the consumer, a saturation point. His argument is that consumers may finally have hit a tipping point where they no longer have the disposable income to plunk down a couple hundred bucks for a whole new kind of technology gadget, on top of what they already spend for what have become the "essentials": smartphone, tablet, some kind of PC, some kind of great television (and probably several of each of these devices for the family) -- plus the cost of the bandwidth to make all of these worth owning, not to mention the games, streaming services, apps, and other content to run on them all.
He may well be right. Whether he is or not, it seems to me, depends on a few questions that we don't really know the answers to:
• How susceptible are these new technologies to Moore's Law? How much and how fast will prices fall?
• How will the new technologies impact the business models of the leading gadget providers today?
• Is the U.S. on the brink of an economic expansion that might free up more household income for even more technology spending? How long will low fuel prices last, and how much (if any) of that spend might get shifted to household technology?
• How susceptible are these new technologies to Moore's Law? How much and how fast will prices fall?
• How will the new technologies impact the business models of the leading gadget providers today?
• Is the U.S. on the brink of an economic expansion that might free up more household income for even more technology spending? How long will low fuel prices last, and how much (if any) of that spend might get shifted to household technology?
All of this matters (or winds up not mattering) to the enterprise communications industry according to how much opportunity there is to integrate some of the latest technology into communications systems. That's where the enterprise's slowness to adopt comes in, at least for general-use systems. For example, many enterprises' conference room video systems are still in the Dark Ages compared to the kinds of capabilities Phil describes in his post. But is that because enterprises can't deal with the technology -- or because they don't need it or it simply lacks an ROI?
It seems likely that these types of next-gen communications will be driven in the enterprise more by vertical industry business cases. Wearables seem like a natural fit (so to speak) for field service workers, for example -- but the decision to adopt that technology would likely be made by the business organizations tasked with improving the performance and efficiency of those teams. Wearables almost by definition are going to be communications devices, but what (if any) role is there for communications technology professionals in the specification, purchase, and management of these devices?
Some of the technologies that Phil describes, like Intel's RealSense -- and like the kinds of near-field communications that Plantronics has been working on integrating with UC systems -- seem like they could spark a revolution in ease of use: Using new authentication methods and speech interfaces to, say, set up a room video conference without the hassle that comes with legacy systems. If that technology came down in price and could be integrated, the user interface would be vastly improved. But what about the business case for ease of use?
The next wave of consumerization/BYOx may be shaping up to be one where you encounter some of the latest technologies at home for the first time, and others at work. Phil uses the example of Nest thermostats -- it seems to me very likely you'll work in a smart building before you live in a smart home. On the other hand, if some kind of basic smartwatches come down in price quickly, you might don a wearable computing device for personal purposes (and may have already) before you need one for work. It doesn't mean the era of BYOx is over, just that the options and decisions might evolve in a different direction.
Follow Eric Krapf and No Jitter on Twitter and Google+!
