One of the problems with any PC versus whatever-we-hope-will-replace-it-this-week discussion is that everything keeps changing so that one comparison made today may not be valid tomorrow. This makes predictions devilishly hard... not to make, of course, but to be right and right for the right reasons.
I can't imagine anyone expecting Sunray or anything like it to create massive *displacement* of existing Windows boxes any time soon. The best one is likely to hope for soon would be meaningful market share in new systems, i.e., expansion or upgrade of seats. There are clearly many desktops which will remain Windows for a long time because the users sitting at them have particular collections of software which they will not easily duplicate on another platform, but realistically, this isn't a large percentage, especially of new seats. A very large percentage of current corporate users use one main application that defines their job. If they are fiscal in roll, this is some kind of accounting application; if clerical then office type. There is some crossover, but I'll bet that a good survey would show that a large percentage of corporate users needed little more than the one application that defines their job. They might use their PC for other things, like surfing, but that isn't necessarily a benefit to management.
One of the interesting combinations of factors which I see playing into this is that PCs have gotten so powerful that the main benefit for most users of upgrading rests only in trying to support bloated new versions of software that don't actually have any positive impact on their jobs. At the same time, MS seems to be intent on producing new versions of Windows that require massive upgrades of the underlying platform whether you run any application software on it or not. Given even a modest trend toward using browsers and Java clients for access to either ASP or in-house apps, isn't it a bit ironic that the application is so lightweight and the need for iron coming from the OS only? It wouldn't surprise me to see a lot of corporations taking a go slow approach to W2K because of this. Would you upgrade 20,000 desktops for no particular benefit?
I can't see the TCO argument in favor of Sunray clients resulting in large numbers of adoptions overnight, valid though it may be. But, it could be that, as some success stories accumulate, that snowballing would take place. This sure won't be overnight though. More likely, I think, will be people insisting on continuing to use W95 boxes in order to get some useful life out of them. |
