A report out from two Gartner analysts today claims that;

Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions, and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the software developer acts

Over on RWW, Richard quotes a PC World article which  says;

The move to server-agnostic applications is still in its infancy but will soon have a major effect on enterprise computing. The legacy applications won’t go away, even if the exciting stuff is being done on Internet-based apps, they said. But it won’t stay that way. Today, 70 to 80 percent of corporate applications require Windows to run, but the Gartner analysts expect a tipping point in 2011, when the majority of these applications will be OS-agnostic, such as Web applications. “Sometime in the middle of the next decade, Windows will be playing a much less important role on the desktop

Richard quotes both himself and Nick Carr to discuss the day, not too long in the future, when all applications will be cloud based and run on a server which is OS agnostic.

I have to say that these comments miss the point, or at least miss asking the question which is begging: why have an OS at all? Surely it is a legacy for days when an OS was needed to launch, run and manage countless apps which were run on the machine. In the future when all our apps are in the clouds, what role will remain for an operating system.

I posted back in September saying that I envisaged a time soon when application would not only be OS agnostic, they would be agnostic to the very existence of an OS itself.

All we need is browsers with a modicum more functionality and the operating system will be rendered obsolesent. Now that’s game-changing!

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.