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iPad3 vs Windows 8 - and the Winner Is...Cloud

Tablets and cloud

As evident from various social media interactions, blogs, tech news sites and other Google searches, the two events that clearly brought the attention of every one happened in quick succession:

  • iPad 3: The much-awaited next version of the popular tablet, while the official date is March 7, already facts and rumors about the likely features and look and feel have flooded the various technical sites.
  • Windows 8: Close on its heels, the Windows 8 consumer preview that happened this week also hit the attention of the technical community. The biggest talking point of Windows 8 is its shift from traditional PC Centric to being more suited for tablets and other mobile devices.

Interestingly there are huge discussions about the issue of ‘Windows 8 vs iPad 3,' while the former is an operating system, latter is a tablet device, yet the discussions are pointing to the fact that Windows 8 will facilitate other non-iPad tablet manufacturers to pose a serious challenge to iPad3.

Analysts claim that while Apple iPad3 is expected to increase the market size further in the tablet field, Windows 8 has enough features to induce a new Windows 8 tablet market that can pose a serious challenge to iPad 3. As it always happens in any kind of competition between innovative products, only time and their respective marketing strategies will provide the final results.

However, what we are seeing is that whatever is the choice in the consumer and client-side computing market, the clear winner on the server side is the Cloud, due the following reasons:

Cloud Is the Winner
In my earlier articles I have highlighted that with the increase in the usage of tablets and cloud, the thick clients market, in the form of applications running on the tablets that connect to the Cloud to perform the server side tasks, will be the future of client server computing.

I have highlighted those thoughts in the articles,

Based on the analysis of both Windows 8 powered tablets and iPad3 we are clearly seeing that Cloud is positioned as the server-side mechanism either way, which highlights the fact ‘ iPad 3 vs Windows 8' and the winner is the ‘Cloud.'

The following chart explains how both the products position cloud as the value proposition to serve as an advanced user experience for both enterprise users and other retail users.

iPad3  Cloud Usage

Windows 8 Powered Tablet's Cloud Usage

Apple has already  integrated  iCloud with  earlier versions of iPad  and iPhone  and  iPad3 is definitely  going to have increased interaction with the iCloud.

With iCloud users can store photos, apps, calendars and access songs on iTunes without having them to store in the phone's memory.

 

Early  previewers  of Windows 8 point out that the client operating system  has  integration with Cloud Storage Services like SkyDrive   and  it is perceived that the Cloud integration capabilities  will go beyond storage.  Much   like iCloud Windows 8  cloud integration capabilities aim at  sharing documents  between multiple PCs  and other Windows 8  devices.

Microsoft claims the following,

You use multiple PCs and a phone. Now you can connect across these devices to SkyDrive, Facebook, Flickr, and other services, so you can smoothly get to all your photos and files.

 

The  AppStore for iPad,   even in the earlier  releases   have  SaaS Based products such that the  tablet client users can use  them  on a subscription based model.

However  we are yet to see  many  enterprise class applications  like iWork  available as a SaaS model. Press notes suggest that  Apple already brings  the subscription model for   games in the appstore.  This concept can easily be extended for any productivity  software from an enterprise perspective.

 

Microsoft  has already  has  a Cloud based service for its enterprise productivity applications in the form of Office 365.

 

It is very much a reality  that  Windows 8 tablets running  Microsoft office applications  using Office 365  Cloud connection and run other enterprise applications by connecting to Windows Azure Cloud Platform.

Summary
With cloud-based services taking firm place in the enterprise, we also believe the industry predictions clearly point at the growth of tablets at the expense of PCs in the near future. The latest leading industry analyst forecast suggest a many-fold increase in tablet sales, especially for enterprises.

To conclude, the computing of the future will be a combination of some piece running on a client and some piece running on the cloud, and with growing support from various client-side devices to integrate into the cloud, the cloud will be the real winner. This post does not aim to compare Windows 8 tables vs iPad3, but rather signifies the importance of building cloud-based applications to be consumed by tablets.

More Stories By Srinivasan Sundara Rajan

Srinivasan Sundara Rajan works at Gavs Technologies as a Chief Architect. His primary focus is enabling Agile Enterprises by facilitating the adoption of Every Thing As A Service Model with particular concentration on BpaaS (Business Process As A Service). Srinivasan is currently writing a series of articles on Indutry SaaS/BpaaS use cases which enterprises can adopt.All the views expressed are Srinivasan's independent analysis of industry and solutions and need not necessarily be of his current or past organizations. Srinivasan would like to thank every one who augmented his Architectural skills with Analytical ideas.

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