A Cnc-Milled aluminum body. Dimensions that rival the svelte Apple Macbook Air. Is this the pitch for the latest consumer Notebook? As it turns out, No. Meet the new generation enterprise products.
A Cnc-Milled aluminum body. Dimensions that rival the svelte Apple Macbook Air. Is this the pitch for the latest consumer Notebook? As it turns out, No. Meet the new generation enterprise products.
Just consider 2009’s Dell Precision M6500 workstation. It was fat, cumbersome, and ungainly, even by standards then.
Think of what a business device looks like to you. Are you picturing a black, thickset laptop with nearly inch-long bezels and a rather drab look? Yup, for the longest time, that was us too. Enterprise and consumer devices used to be in two entirely different categories. While companies focused on pouring their design dollars into the latter and sprucing them up to look their Sunday best, it always seemed like no one cared as much about the aesthetics of business devices. Productivity and functionality came before everything else. And much like business attire, god forbid if you walked into a meeting with a casual machine!
Just consider 2009’s Dell Precision M6500 workstation. It was fat, cumbersome and ungainly, even by standards then. Fast-forward four years to 2013, and the Precision M6700 may look slightly thinner, but not a whole lot has changed.
After our brush with next-generation business devices like the HP Elite x2 and EliteBook Folio G1, we can’t help but feel that the winds are shifting.
Enterprise devices are starting to look better and better in a really short span of time. In fact, going by their design and specification trends, it appears increasingly likely that you’ll end up using the same device for work and entertainment by your next upgrade.
More telling was the manner in which HP showed off its new devices at the company’s print and PC launch event in Macau in early April. HP didn’t just take to the stage to extol the virtues of the respective products, it trotted out a polished presentation featuring fresh-faced models; even going a step further to create fictitious profiles – where each was a young, upstart professional with a life outside of work – showing how its latest products fit perfectly into both work and play.
Enterprise devices are starting to look better and better in a really short span of time.
To put it bluntly, This is a generation that wants its devices to look good.
And there’s a very good reason why the presentation was so snazzy, fashionable even. More than 30 percent of the workforce in Asia Pacific and Japan are millennials, and to put it bluntly, this is a generation that wants its devices to look good. By 2020, millennials are even expected to comprise half of the global workforce. Furthermore, 62 percent of the workforce now works from more than one location, and flexible working hours and telecommuting are on the rise.
What this all means is that the traditional, spatial barriers that divided work and life are breaking down, and the two are rapidly converging. It used to be that you did work in the office, and went home to your life. But now that technological advances have allowed us to work untethered from our office desks – and combined with the increasing prevalence of BYOD policies – it’s become more important Bang & Olufsen Audio for business devices to actually be something that we want to take home with us.
Still, it may be a little early to conclude that consumer and business devices will eventually become one and the same, but what we can say is that they are becoming remarkably similar. As it turns out, HP’s Macau event offered a clue as to where this might all be going. While the majority of the devices showed belonged to its enterprise line-up, HP also revealed in the same breath the HP Spectre, its new darling consumer notebook that also happens to be the world’s thinnest at a mere 10.4mm. When such a striking machine like the Spectre shares the stage with a host of fairly attractive enterprise devices, you know you can no longer think of them as being entirely different.
This convergence between work and play is taking place on two fronts – design and form factor. For the first time, companies are including design as a key factor when conceptualizing enterprise devices, and thinking about how well these devices can perform for entertainment, outside of a cubicle. It has effectively become a fourpronged approach, with design and entertainment joining the longstanding considerations of security and productivity.
This convergence between work and play is taking place on two fronts – design and form factor.
Business devices are no longer staid, utilitarian affairs to be used exclusively at your office desk.
