One of the things that an economic collapse promises is change. We may love to anticipate it, but when it comes to changing the way we do things, we hate it. This is one of the reasons that PCs haven’t really changed that much despite viruses and botnets they are going crazy, and every month one or two companies have to make embarrassing announcements about the loss of customer information.

Look at your keyboard. Its basic design was to keep typewriter arms from tangling. This stopped being a problem when IBM came out with the Electric electric typewriter in the early 1960s and it was never a problem with computers, however we not only continue to use the old fashioned keyboard (since some are awesome), we also teach children how to use it.

But take the whole world and pull the rug of economic security out from under it, and people are suddenly motivated to change. You have three jobs and 20 people who want them. You can type 30 percent faster because you don’t have a conventional keyboard, so you get the job and probably get promoted. Others will also make the change.

The same goes for PCs. Lenovo has just launched an interesting alternative to the traditional desktop PC. It is calling this new platform “Secure Managed Client”..” It has a number of advantages shared by blade PCs, thin clients, and traditional PCs. But if it wasn’t for the economic collapse, I doubt it would have much traction because it’s different. But with people struggling to preserve their jobs by saving every penny they can, this solution may have suddenly become a player.

Secure Managed Client

In a nutshell, these are diskless PCs connected via a standard high-speed Ethernet connection to a specialized storage array designed by Intel specifically for the task. Since the entire image of each PC resides on the attached array, software updates, patches, and software maintenance can be performed with PCs powered off and only the storage array powered on.

From a security point of view, the repository is centralized and can be protected. If a PC is stolen, the PC itself is the only thing lost. In an economic downturn, site theft is likely to increase sharply. While insurance will cover the cost of lost hardware, lost data can become not only a reporting nightmare, but can, if the loss is significant, hurt a company’s bottom line. Some types of information are difficult to replace, and because businesses operate with a small staff, they have limited ability to recreate lost information in a timely manner.

The risk of hard drive failure and loss due to catastrophic events is virtually eliminated if proper backup procedures are implemented for the repository, as users cannot disable these protections or postpone them.

mobile future

While the initial solution is desktop-only, there is a very real possibility that a low-cost, netbook-like mobile product with limited synchronization and constant WiMax or WAN connectivity could be implemented to limit data on the laptop and provide lots of data. of the same benefits that the secure managed client brings to desktop computers.

This is probably the biggest step. I expect it to come out sometime in the next 24 months, but in general, the concept of local storage is reaching the end of its useful life. It’s not hard to imagine a future where storage is provided even in the consumer space as a service, given the recent formation of the EMC Decho company, designed specifically to address this future need for those looking for a more mobile, bundled solution.

to wrap

This is one of the most exciting trends that is likely to accelerate over the next 24 months as companies struggle to contain costs and increasingly focus on solutions that deliver strong short-term security and monetary benefits. Lenovo Secure Managed Client does exactly that, and we’ll review others as they come to market.