By James E. Gaskin
The corporate desktop has looked the same for decades: computer, keyboard, mouse, desk phone, maybe a printer. But do these tools dominate because they’re the perfect combination of technology needed for work today, or is the enterprise workplace due for an extreme makeover?
The corporate desktop has looked the same for decades: computer, keyboard, mouse, desk phone, maybe a printer. But do these tools dominate because they’re the perfect combination of technology needed for work today, or is the enterprise workplace due for an extreme makeover?
According to industry analysts, hardware vendors, architects and futurists, the odds that major changes will revamp the standard corporate cubicle, technology tools and even buildings, rise every day.
Of course, fundamental changes like this don’t happen at all once. “When you’ve got hardware in place, it’s tough to yank it out,” cautions Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group. “Some corporate PBXs are still in use from the 1980s. Faxing was declared dead in 1995, but I have two in my office.”
Enderle’s point is that it takes a major event to upset the status quo, but that event, or confluence of events, appears to be happening today.
The proliferation of mobile devices, the broad availability of high-speed wireless access, cloud-based services and browser-based videoconferencing mean that employees no long have to be tied to their desktop PCs.
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