Economic slump and web services give netbooks big role in business

Stan Beer
Monday, 02 February 2009 10:31

IT Industry - Market

News of massive staff cuts from major enterprises are becoming a daily occurrence and this year we can also expect to hear news of brutal cuts to IT spending.

Given their budgetary constraints, organisations are going to be looking for ways to cut not only hardware costs but also power. Hey, it even looks good to be greening the organisation and saving energy through server consolidation and downsizing the desktop.

2009 is likely to see a quickening of the adoption of SaaS and cloud computing applications. Enterprises will be looking to save on the upfront costs of software licenses.

The adoption of applications delivered by the web instead of residing on the desktop will diminish the argument for the powerful local workstations necessary to locally process compute intensive desktop software. Inexpensive green thin clients will be the order of the day.

Likewise on the road unquitous wireless broadband and web services will combine to make light low powered travel friendly netbooks the computer of choice rather than a comparitively heavy high priced high powered notebook.

Considering the needs of consumers as opposed to business users, it seems natural that most consumers would only want a netbook as a secondary computer. After all, for a consumer a computer is often not just a web device. It is a games machine, a media centre and a home server.

At work, a netbook is a compact money saving device that can access the applications that run an enterprise for a fraction of the cost of the expensive power hungry legacy desktop and laptop computers currently littering offices. It may be an argument that many bosses will be reluctant to accept but faced with cutting costs or closing down, they may have no choice.