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The new pill called Tablets

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Abhigna
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MUMBAI, INDIA: Life was free of haste, careless of exactitude, unconcerned by productivity!

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Time, for a long period of history, was ‘Kept. Nicholas Carr beautifully chronicles the journey from shadow-based sundials, water-fuelled clepsydras and sand-run hourglasses to the pocket-watch in The Shallows. He poignantly observes how in early centuries, "there was no particular need to measure time with precision or break a day up into little pieces. For most people, the movements of the sun, the moon and the stars provided the only clocks they needed."

But when the latter half of the Middle Ages clocked in, ironically, monks were the first people to demand a more precise measurement of time, for observing rigorous schedules of prayers. Soon royal courts across Europe began to invest in refinement and manufacture of ingenious clocks. The tolling of bell for people working in factories, farms and mills soon segued into a culture where every town, market, or parish started following its own clock and thus bringing in a tighter scheduling and synchronization of time per se than ever before.

Miniaturization advancements proceeded from here and time came for more affordable timepieces that could fit in people's drawing rooms and then later into their pockets.

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Citing Landes, Carr also recollects. "The personal clock became an ever-visible, ever-audible companion, continually reminding its owner of time used, time spent, time wasted and time lost." The personalization led way to individualization and became the most salient aspect of western civilization.

Perhaps some eons down the line, someone would be celebrating the journey of computers in another book all the way from mainframes, client servers, PCs, desktops, to hand-helds and tablets.

The monks here would be consumers, the royal courts here would be some special verticals, and the parish here would be BYOD shift and pockets, well, almost everyone around you.

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If a book is indeed able to capture this incredible Gulliver-like journey, what would be most fascinating to observe is how tablets like pocket-time-chains, affected both civilization and industry while they changed their clothes every season. They also peal a lot of questions that can echo for long.

What happens inside a clock when it shrivels from a bell-tower to an accessory inside someone's trousers? Do the cogs and wheels that drive the mechanical wonder of a clock change and how? Do people match their wardrobe around this ornament or vice versa? Does it pose practical movement dangers of ‘Honey, I shrunk the kids' flavor?

So if life was unconcerned with productivity before time-pieces arrived, there have to be mindset shifts on business-productivity as more and more compute-pieces leave office desks and comfortably plop down inside a jeans' pocket.

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In other words, problems of architecture, levels of developer activity, and pragmatic issues of application-gaps, ecosystem rhythm etc - these are just some doubts that chime in when one think of the rapid pace at which tablets are occupying our pockets and minds.

We sit down with Ravi Gupta, Vertical Head - Public Sector & Enterprise, Enterprise Solutions Group, Intel and try to make sense of some needles of change ticking around these rapid numbers of tabletisation in the industry.

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An inside-peek, as it has to be with Intel.

Tabletisation is a trend that cannot be argued with but why do we still feel hollow-spots when it comes to enterprise-grade applications?

Largely, the consumer-genre tablets are designed to give customer experience around content consumption and that requires more I/O than ‘compute'. That is a dominant portion of tablet market today, because it is more of a companion-device and social-interface today. But large part of business slice of the market would need office-side replacements of traditional compute devices. There it should connect seamlessly to other I/O nodes in office and hence should have sound security policies. A large part of tablets on Windows side would be crucial. I would not agree though that tablets are not ready for enterprise segment. Think of malware blocking or encryption features coming to tablets and we will only be seeing a newly-defined experience. But it is an evolving usage model. A large part of BFSI back-end is automated but if we can spruce up the front-end, the whole KYC cycle can be shortened amazingly. Even in insurance a lot of authentication of claims process can be done on-the-fly if we embrace the tablet-trend the right way.

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If consumerisation is lacking, why not mobiles instead of tablets? How do they stack up on APIs, design real estate etc?

The myth that a tablet is not as much of an on-body portable device is only psychological. A large part of standards required are not in GUI due to aspects like basic human interface, any-place operability, and enough progress on standards before they can become ubiquitous. There is a good LTE and network evolution happening of late though. Talking of mobile-based automation, a lot has penetrated India, and now we are trying to take it to the next level like processing data on-the-field. Universal LTE coming into play would be worth watching for.

Why is there is this perceived lack of developer interest when it comes to applications vs. games?

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There was no productive application at least two years back. More interest happens due to consumer appetite and the temptation to capture the touch-level part is understandable. The tactile experience makes the UI addictive for gamers. A large part of Google or Microsoft's strategy is to get users hooked on to the new interface, for instance. Now phase two should bring in attention to real-world or work-related applications too.

Be it Haswell, Clovertrail, Baytrail or your continuing efforts and directions, there is a clear embrace to new trends in the industry. How do you reckon tabletisation as a strong influencer here?

 

Tabletization is a big force, specially in the BFSI sector. There are over 200 million middle-class potential customers in India alone for different screen sizes across different price points. Some 200 million customers will make banking transactions on their tablets by 2017 (19 per cent of total mobile banking customers). Customers prefer tablets over smart phones for banking due to its larger display, app driven UX with a more convenient tactile interface. There are lot of adjoining trends that are affecting the shift. Many banks are investing aggressively in online banking, for reasons like cost reduction or customer retention and the functionality of online banking having a parallel influence by tablet banking.

How?

There is certainly a strong potential for a great tablet banking user experience, especially with the rich interface tablets offer. In fact, if you look closer, the tablet is becoming part of an overall customer relationship strategy in the BFSI sector. Customers now expect a customizable, personalized experience on their terms and at Intel we are excited to work towards advanced and intelligent support offering in the customer service space as well as around solutions and Opportunities for Banks to engage in the process of tabletization. Integration of consumerization and compute is actually a right-hand shift for Intel. We have seen strong inflection points in last two years and have been adapting out strategy. Even the Cloud trend in last three years has been significant and be it products for data centre space or for devices' space, we recognize the winds of change.

We realize that while we have been great in the ‘compute' regime, now it's the ‘compute+connect+communicate' regime to talk about. We are now talking of most powerful engines as well as cutting energy consumption with new devices, as ‘compute' should not be constrained by ‘wattage. Our IP redesign, collaborations, acquisitions etc, everything abets this shift. For instance, no mainframe can offer the package we can as an OEN design around SoC with a strong time-to-market advantage and with a near-PC powerful experience.

How crucial are new handshakes in your emphasis on tabletisation?

We are working on application ecosystems strongly so that apps are better able to harness the ‘compute' part inside. With ecosystem largely our enabling work is with OEMs, ODMs to assure multiple designs, form factors meeting different price point and capabilities. We work with Google and Microsoft to assure that their latest OS experience is best of class with Intel. We work with h ISVs / app writers to assure that their apps are best optimized / perform the best on Intel based tablets

Consumer technologies and supercomputers are strong action-fields for Intel on different turfs. Is it easy or possible to bridge them somewhere?

Today the tablet in our hand is more powerful than a five-year old PC or a 20 year old supercomputer. Moore's law is equally applicable to all devices so yes you can expect devices to be more powerful as we move ahead to the extent possibly where they surpass the super-compute power of older generations.

Any ripples from Open Internet debate meanwhile?

It is both an opportunity and a risk and it would depend on how we use it Open Internet can be reality like mobiles-in-every-hand some day. Many cable operators, cellular players are discussing about it but the practical aspect of it would be the one to watch out for, certain usage models are already evolving and some will take time,