Fujitsu A/NZ CTO, Craig Baty, claims the growth of cloud and broadband technologies are creating a human centric ICT.
He told the KANZ Broadband Summit in Hobart, “It's all about connecting people to computers, processing and services rather than having the computer be at the center of everything.”
According to Baty, technologies such as PCs, mobile devices, cameras, iPads, iPods and GPS' make a consumer the center of processing.
This is the way we should be viewing the world going forward, he said.
Instead of designing things the way the computer needs it done or the way an organisation wants it, a service tailored for individuals will be provided by linking humans through these devices to other devices, networks and databases.
However, transitioning from the current network centric world to human centric computing required the implementation of ubiquitous high-speed broadband in Australia, Baty said.
With a number of other technology changes such as virtualisation and client server, people often think that cloud is the next technology change. “Actually it is not a technology change but rather, a commercial game changer,” he said.
Factors taken into consideration in building a cloud locally are different from the rest of the world as Australia has a unique view of what should be in the cloud.
Baty claimed the three most important things in a cloud are pay-per-use, self-service, and elasticity and scalability – and that is just the beginning of the game. The company’s real vision of the cloud is the applications and the connectivity to those applications.
Fujitsu A/NZ discovered that instead of being used for testing and development purposes as originally thought two years ago, consumers are using the cloud for different reasons – archiving, application development, delivering shared services, and infrastructure consolidation.
“When broadband comes in, the future will be things we can’t imagine because we don’t have those capabilities,” Baty said.
Fujitsu A/NZ conducted some tests from a networking viewpoint on how to drive human centric society.
A 2010 survey, of 500 locals, found consumers are particular about data sovereignty and private security. It revealed locals wanted their information kept within Australia and only 20 per cent trusted the government with their data.
Financial organisations were trusted more and IT companies, even less.
Another more recent survey, in collaboration with Microsoft, asked 200 local CIOs about the importance of virtualisation.
Results showed CIOs felt virtualisation was important and would not mind spending money for the technology.
“The issues and challenges aren’t getting better, but more advanced in people’s minds as they understand more about the cloud,” Baty said.
