In 1990, in a keynote speech at the Comdex computer conference, Microsoft's (MSFT) then-chief executive, Bill Gates, bolstered his bona fides as a tech visionary when he declared the PC industry would produce advances within a few years that would put information at people's fingertips. To get there, Gates said, the world needed three things: a more "personal" personal computer, more powerful communications networks, and easy access to a broad range of information. Sometimes visionaries are right on the vision but off on the timing.
Only now is Gates' grand vision finally becoming a reality for businesses. While pieces of what he had in mind have been available for years, they typically were expensive and difficult to set up and use. Now that more personal PC is here in the form of smartphones and mini-laptops, and broadband wireless networks make it possible for people to be connected almost anytime and anywhere. At the same time, we're seeing the rise of cloud computing, the vast array of interconnected machines managing the data and software that used to run on PCs. This combination of mobile and cloud technologies is shaping up to be one of most significant advances in the computing universe in decades. "The big vision: We're finally getting there," says Donagh Herlihy, chief information officer of Avon Products (AVP). "Today, wherever you are, you can connect to all the information you need."
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