Compared to my youthful colleagues elsewhere in this blog, I’m old enough to remember the first “Killer App”: that is the application that made us all sit up and say “You know, these computer things actually are pretty useful”. It also made the computer manufacturers say “People will have a reason to buy computers to do this”.
That application that changed the world, from spotty geeks talking computing to accountants actually using computers, was the spreadsheet. Originally it was a program called VisiCalc running on the Apple II that got us using the technology. Not long afterwards we had SuperCalc that ran on other computers. That in turn morphed into Lotus 1-2-3, which in turn morphed into Microsoft Excel and the rest, as they say, is history.
The key here was the change was from thinking about the technology for it’s own sake over to thinking about what it could do for you. We actually had compelling reasons to buy the technology.
I frequently hear the lament “If only we had a killer app for {insert suitable technology here}”, but I have to ask now if we really need one?
Cloud computing is getting a lot of press at the moment, but it’s all about the technology of cloud computing, not what it will do for you. I hear comments about needing a compelling reason to use the cloud, a new killer application that we will be unable to resist.
In truth I think our social needs will drive our use of the cloud combined with the delivery of services through the internet. Increasingly I find it is getting harder to be away from the internet and thus my PC. I want to know what time my son is arriving at the railway station? In the days when accountants used Visicalc I had a railway timetable of many hundreds of pages & I looked up the times myself; now I look at the various internet sites to get real-time status of his train journey. Someone mentions a film which I cannot fully recall so I get the details from IMDB.com to fulfil my curiosity. Where is my new GPS for my airplane? I can track it online and get a delivery time down to within an hour so I can plan the rest of my day. And how many times have you been away from your computer & thought “If only I could look that up on Wikipedia?”.
The cloud computing initiative is bringing us sites like Zoho.com, if you haven’t seen it then I recommend you to take a look. It is an office suite on-line with word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, document storage, calendar, email and more. Every time I log in there seems to be something new. I can use it anywhere I can access the internet and I haven’t installed any application on my PC. Google is promising similar services, as is Microsoft. It’s applications like these that are the emerging fruits of cloud computing.
So back to my question, do we need a new killer application? I think not, like Rob Rich in the TMForum newsletter I suspect that our increasing use of the wide range of on-line services will become our compelling event. However Rob Rich sees widening the range of on-line services as the compelling event. I would suggest that it is our need to have access to them with us at all times, and to do what we take for granted with our PC but using the new mini-devices, is already showing the signs of becoming the next major technology initiative. Not so much a killer app, more a killer socio-technological need.
Please note that no accountants were harmed in the writing of this blog entry
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