It’s a surprise to some (the media, at least, is pretending surprise) but Intel is looking to get into the streaming video space. My cynicism here regarding “surprise” is of course related to the fact that they’ve been working on that for some time, and probably Intel has little choice. It really gets back to portable devices and the fact that they’re built almost entirely without Intel processors.
Entertainment is a big market, as Apple has shown. The PC space Intel has dominated almost from the first is big too, but it’s clearly plateaued. Other chips own portable devices and while Intel may hope for an against-all-odds-Gingrich-like victory of Windows 8 against iOS and Android, it’s probably not smart to mortgage the house for the bet. While TV may not be the ideal space (Intel actually seemed to be exiting the space just last year) it’s about the only game in town.
What Intel is apparently working on is something along the “Apple TV” and “Google TV” line, which is a pseudoSTB that would mediate Internet-served content to a TV and presumably try to integrate the viewing experience with that of traditional channelized television. I’m hearing that all three of these companies (and a couple more besides) have been working on the features that might augment basic streaming viewing to increase utility. There are obvious ones; smart TV could “tell” you that nothing you’re typically willing to watch is coming on in the next couple hours but there’s a couple of streaming options available that your current viewing pattern suggests you may be “in the mood” for. Everyone will do this sort of thing, or sue everyone else on alleged patent infringements. It’s the new hot stuff that has to be considered, and of course we don’t know what that is yet. It’s not that Intel or the rest think they’ll make it all up of course; the TV model will be app-based just like phones and tablets are. The thing is, anything that requires major hardware or connectivity concessions may require hardware support and you don’t want the platform to fall short of early needs.
Streaming video is becoming interesting, and believe it or not the cause isn’t the portable device as much as crummy programming. The problem is the advertising battle, in two dimensions. First, network TV now has to compete with everything online in terms of ad budget. Advertising is largely a zero-sum game, so whatever is gained by Google or whoever is lost by ABC or NBC. Less money, less programming budget, more “reality TV” that appeals to a very limited demographic, and more viewing segments cut adrift. In 2012 flight from boredom will be a larger driver for new streaming users than mobile video will be. And of course streaming gives people a way to avoid TV and commercials, which makes the problem worse.
Video isn’t the only space where changes in demand may bring changes in technology. In cloud computing, I’m seeing some order emerging from the hype-driven chaos. For a couple of years now we’ve been hearing that the cloud was going to absorb enterprise IT, something that responsible surveys have continually showed is untrue. Not to mention that half an hour with a calculator will show you that it can’t be true; the cost of the cloud is actually higher than the cost of internal IT for mainstream computing apps. Most of what’s driving the cloud today is really a set of hosting-like applications, expansions of the basic web model, and most comes from web startups and not enterprises. Despite what you read, enterprises are still just dipping their toes in the cloud model for the good reason that the model isn’t quite ready for them yet. But it’s getting there.
What’s emerging in the cloud world is what we could call a vision of the cloud as a CONTEXT for applications and services, not as a place to run stuff cheaper. IBM alludes to this in its just-released survey on cloud business models, but the document is surprisingly inept given IBM’s normal strategic leadership. The real innovation in the cloud today is coming largely from open-source projects that are aiming at what some call “DevOps”, the marriage of operational and developer activities. This is important because it addresses first the reality that important cloud apps will more likely be written for the cloud than migrated to it, and second the reality that managing real relationships among virtual resources and making it all work for a user who is also part of a virtual relationship can get a bit hairy. There’s interesting stuff happening here, and it will likely impact even networking, eventually.