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How does distribution play in the cloud
Distribution plays a huge role in this. First of all one could argue ultimately distribution has to have a cloud strategy as well. The physical world is going to give way to the virtual world. And shoot, we used to sell packaged software in boxes that people used to put in warehouses. And that paradigm went away.
We work with a lot of companies that span that gamut from the data center to the edge. Let me give you a real life example: a very large bottling company that makes a very popular soft drink like many other companies has multiple sets of problems. One -- you have got a distribution issue. I have got to get my products to a bazillion points of presence. So I have got to do that outrageously efficiently. And when you think about doing that you are dealing with forecasting systems at the hub of the business, translating out to somebody who is sitting in a car driving somewhere.
And then they are going to get to a location and then there is a reconciliation of orders. There is a hand off, a financial exchange, and then the drive of that product out into the local community requires social infrastructure and networking and likely that store has very little capability, digital assets to go drive that conversion because it is a gas station or it is a 7-11. And so they want to be able to extend a social model over their retail network which drives higher conversion. So when you start thinking -- 'sounds great. Conceptually a slam dunk' -- Go do it. Make it happen!
Then you start saying there is an application transformation of legacy apps to modern apps. I have got my old bullet-proof enterprise apps that now have to be Webified if you will. You have got device issues because you are going to have to deal with the right screen in the right place at the right time. It is not a notebook or a desktop or a tablet or a phone. It is a screen that serves a purpose. And then you look at it and then you have got devices where you would like to have some intimacy between those devices so that you don't have non-technical people at the end of the application value chain having to deal with support, having to deal with things that break, having to deal with training people. That has all got to change.
Let me give you another data point. And I think this one speaks to the opportunity of partners and all the junk that was in the press the other day about: is HP trying to sell off its PC division? No, we are not trying to learn Korean and all that kind of stuff. I mean it is absurd. The device opportunity is massive and growing by leaps and bounds. And people that are saying the PC category is dying because of tablets really have a myopic view of technology. The bottom line is in the next handful of years most of the world is going to go online. It is estimated that of the world's 7 billion population more than 4 billion people will be online by the end of the decade. And hanging off that world of a lot of people -- we are talking a lot more than are on there right now- there is going to be 30 billion devices hung off that network.
Next: Facing A Challenging New World
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