Power Hardware

In Hardware technologies are shaping up in a very interesting manner. On one

side, hardware is becoming so powerful that you could literally have a super

computer sitting on your desktop, or carry a powerful PC in your pocket, or even

setup a scomplete data center in a small box. While on the other side, there's

hardware technology that let's you extract the maximum potential from your

existing hardware through effective resource sharing.

Which one you choose completely depends upon your business need. So we'll

start off by giving you relevant examples of how some companies are leveraging

these developments in hardware technology.

Tech for hardware sharing



Once we had visited the office of an insurance company and saw a very

interesting layout. All employees who were dealing directly with completing the

insurance formalities in that company had two CRT monitors on their desks. One

of the monitors was tilted by 90 degrees and kept in portrait mode on the table,

while the other was kept in its normal position. The reason for this was simple.

The tilted monitor was used to view scanned copies of insurance documents,

because they're long and therefore easier to read on a monitor kept in portrait

mode. The regular monitor was used to read data from the insurance document

displayed on the tilted monitor and enter it into the company's insurance

application. So essentially, here is a very specific business need to have

multiple monitors on every employee's desktop. Today, there are hardware

technologies that can make monitor sharing easier and more effective.

In another scenario, we saw the computer lab of a govt. school in AP. Here,

every desktop only had a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, but no PC. They were

sharing the resources of a single PC. The school didn't have budgets to afford a

PC for every desktop, and the students only had to learn elementary computing,

so this contraption was sufficient. Moreover, the school was in a remote area,

which faced lengthy power cuts. So, with lesser PCs, the school didn't need

heavy UPSs to backup everything. They could simply backup the single PC was

powering all the desktops. This sort of a setup can be great for companies

who're on a tight budget, or who need PCs for basic productivity work.

New hardware tech



This is the Internet age, where everything seems to be happening in the

cloud-LinkedIn, Gmail, YouTube, Twitter, and a host of other online services are

re-defining the way we interact with each other. Not only that, but now even

more software is moving into the Internet cloud. So much so that sometimes one

wonders whether there will be any offline software left at all, or will

everything be 'up in the cloud?'

It may sound crazy to talk about the Internet and the cloud in a story about

super hardware. But the fact is that all hardware, no matter how powerful, is

completely useless if there isn't enough software to use its capabilities.

That's exactly what the Internet and cloud are bringing in-lots of online

services, millions of web apps, and lots of rich multimedia content. All of

these need the right kind of hardware in order to be used properly. A web

browser alone isn't enough, especially when you're on the move. That's why,

there's a sudden surge in the types of mobile computing devices being

introduced, and some very interesting technologies are making this possible.

Besides the Internet and the cloud, major development is also visible in data

center optimization. The economic slowdown has taught every organization to

optimize and leverage their IT resources more effectively. That's why,

organizations are also busy consolidating and optimizing their own data centers.

This reduces the number of locations they have to manage, saves them the cost of

real-estate, as well as the manpower to manage it all. Data center consolidation

can only happen if you can reduce your existing hardware and replace it with

more compact, and yet more powerful hardware. This is where server technologies

become important, and we're seeing some revolutionary developments happening on

that front.

Lastly, while some technologies are seeing a complete makeover, there are

others that are seeing major revisions. One such domain is interface

technologies, such as USB and SATA. Neither of the two require an introduction.

It would suffice to say here that both have recently undergone a revision, and

the new versions are much more faster then the previous ones. How much faster,

and how do you upgrade to them? We'll give you a complete report based on some

live tests we conducted in our lab on both of these.

So developments in mobile, server, and interface technologies are just a few

things you'll read about in this story. Besides these, we've also talked about

the upcoming Solid State Drives, which are much faster, and consume lesser power

than conventional hard drives. Currently, SSDs can't replace their 'spinning'

counterparts because they're atrociously priced. But the future can be scary for

traditional hard drives.

In Hardware technologies are shaping up in a very interesting manner. On one

side, hardware is becoming so powerful that you could literally have a super

computer sitting on your desktop, or carry a powerful PC in your pocket, or even

setup a scomplete data center in a small box. While on the other side, there's

hardware technology that let's you extract the maximum potential from your

existing hardware through effective resource sharing.

Which one you choose completely depends upon your business need. So we'll

start off by giving you relevant examples of how some companies are leveraging

these developments in hardware technology.

Tech for hardware sharing



Once we had visited the office of an insurance company and saw a very

interesting layout. All employees who were dealing directly with completing the

insurance formalities in that company had two CRT monitors on their desks. One

of the monitors was tilted by 90 degrees and kept in portrait mode on the table,

while the other was kept in its normal position. The reason for this was simple.

The tilted monitor was used to view scanned copies of insurance documents,

because they're long and therefore easier to read on a monitor kept in portrait

mode. The regular monitor was used to read data from the insurance document

displayed on the tilted monitor and enter it into the company's insurance

application. So essentially, here is a very specific business need to have

multiple monitors on every employee's desktop. Today, there are hardware

technologies that can make monitor sharing easier and more effective.

In another scenario, we saw the computer lab of a govt. school in AP. Here,

every desktop only had a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, but no PC. They were

sharing the resources of a single PC. The school didn't have budgets to afford a

PC for every desktop, and the students only had to learn elementary computing,

so this contraption was sufficient. Moreover, the school was in a remote area,

which faced lengthy power cuts. So, with lesser PCs, the school didn't need

heavy UPSs to backup everything. They could simply backup the single PC was

powering all the desktops. This sort of a setup can be great for companies

who're on a tight budget, or who need PCs for basic productivity work.

New hardware tech



This is the Internet age, where everything seems to be happening in the

cloud-LinkedIn, Gmail, YouTube, Twitter, and a host of other online services are

re-defining the way we interact with each other. Not only that, but now even

more software is moving into the Internet cloud. So much so that sometimes one

wonders whether there will be any offline software left at all, or will

everything be 'up in the cloud?'

It may sound crazy to talk about the Internet and the cloud in a story about

super hardware. But the fact is that all hardware, no matter how powerful, is

completely useless if there isn't enough software to use its capabilities.

That's exactly what the Internet and cloud are bringing in-lots of online

services, millions of web apps, and lots of rich multimedia content. All of

these need the right kind of hardware in order to be used properly. A web

browser alone isn't enough, especially when you're on the move. That's why,

there's a sudden surge in the types of mobile computing devices being

introduced, and some very interesting technologies are making this possible.

Besides the Internet and the cloud, major development is also visible in data

center optimization. The economic slowdown has taught every organization to

optimize and leverage their IT resources more effectively. That's why,

organizations are also busy consolidating and optimizing their own data centers.

This reduces the number of locations they have to manage, saves them the cost of

real-estate, as well as the manpower to manage it all. Data center consolidation

can only happen if you can reduce your existing hardware and replace it with

more compact, and yet more powerful hardware. This is where server technologies

become important, and we're seeing some revolutionary developments happening on

that front.

Lastly, while some technologies are seeing a complete makeover, there are

others that are seeing major revisions. One such domain is interface

technologies, such as USB and SATA. Neither of the two require an introduction.

It would suffice to say here that both have recently undergone a revision, and

the new versions are much more faster then the previous ones. How much faster,

and how do you upgrade to them? We'll give you a complete report based on some

live tests we conducted in our lab on both of these.

So developments in mobile, server, and interface technologies are just a few

things you'll read about in this story. Besides these, we've also talked about

the upcoming Solid State Drives, which are much faster, and consume lesser power

than conventional hard drives. Currently, SSDs can't replace their 'spinning'

counterparts because they're atrociously priced. But the future can be scary for

traditional hard drives.

Next-



Compact Computing