PC Blades in Ho Chi Minh City

Following on from yesterday’s post: IDC reports that desktop PCs are losing out to laptops in mature markets. If you look at the way most businesses work these days, it makes perfect sense. Modern business thrives on mobility: not only large-scale, transcontinental mobility, but the mobility that enables workers to move from room to room on a corporate campus and stay productive.

The gradual phase-out of desktops with laptops is just the first step in better matching computing resources to worker needs. Longer term, corporations won’t be able to ignore the security liabilities that laptops’ hard drives present. They’ll need to find ways to fully integrate UMPCs, tablet PCs, and other mobile devices into their existing infrastructure while keeping data secure. And this is, of course, the thing that centralized computing does best.

Desktops will always have a place in the world, but it’s looking like they’ll be at the very high and low ends of the market:

“Think of the desktop market as gamers and grandmas. PC gamers remain a lucrative market segment, buying expensive computers to better blast aliens in head-to-head online competition. The elderly and all others who simply want to read e-mail and hit the occasional Web site are generally content with low-cost, limited-function desktops.” (BusinessWeek)

And yes, desktops are enjoying increased popularity in emerging markets. According to IDC spokesperson Loren Loverde, director of IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, those markets have been so historically undersaturated that new sales have a dramatic effect on growth:

“Essentially all regions [including Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe and Latin America] are seeing higher penetration. The population and historically lower penetration in these regions gives them more potential for growth now — particularly with prices coming down.” (eChannelLine)

However, in the long run these markets, too, may eventually present great opportunities for centralized computing, particularly in the context of outsourcing. One Slashdot commenter writes that “it is no surprise that companies are looking beyond India to a slew of emerging hotspots for IT, such as Brazil, China, and Vietnam. Will Ho Chi Minh City be the new Bangalore?”

If a “new Bangalore” does emerge, companies in the U.S. will need ways to manage and support offshored offices there. And while desktops may be all these markets can afford right now, infrastructure build-out and the spread of technologies like WiMax and WiFi makes it ever more possible to install sophisticated computing environments in the remotest of places. We’re probably a long way off from seeing a PC Blade installation in Ho Chi Minh City — but that day may be closer than any of us imagine.