The PC Is Dead... Long Live The Cloud

Daniel Maddux, of Elite Documentation Inc, just reminded me of something that's been bugging me for years. In 1978, I began building micro-computers in my basement and selling them to local businesses--mostly realtors, retail stores, and CPA firms. This was several years before IBM asked Bill Gates to find the software to make micro-computers (later to be called PCs) work, making Microsoft the world's leader in micro-computer operating systems. If you are well-versed in the subject of operating systems, you might want to skip the next paragraph.

Operating systems, also known as 'The OS', and sometimes incorrectly referred to as "the CPU", are the instructions to make it possible for computers to work. For example: I am a programmer, and when I write you a program to manage your stores, my instructions are carried out by the OS. This is all done in the central processing unit (CPU), as it manipulates mathematical calculations that are controlled by a clock (similar to a metronome), which acts as the timing device managing the speed of the calculations. For simplicity, you can think of operating systems as you would the mechanical and electrical functions of your car--engine, transmission, brakes, lights, etc. It is not necessary that you know how to fix a car's engine to own and operate one. And it is not necessary for me to know how the OS works in order to write convenience store software, or for you to use the programs I write to manage your business.

The systems I built in 1978-1979, were powered by Z-80 microprocessors and ran on an operating system known as NorthStar DOS. These computers were immeasurably superior to most other small business computers at the time. The Internet came into existence some ten years earlier (1969), and I first became involved in it in 1986. At that time, the Internet was being used as a bulletin board system (BBS) for computer geeks (like myself) that shared information. It was a simple system, there were no graphics, or colors, and there was no mouse. You posted a question, and within a few hours, if you were lucky, you would get an answer. Th Internet is where I met my friend Bizhan Binesh. Before meeting in person, in 1992, we started a BBS for the oil industry which ran on the Apple computer platform. I've only met Bizhan twice. His son was three-years old at the time and I believe he has just recently graduated from college.

I remember that time as if it were only yesterday. I recall that IBM avoided micro-computers for several years. The general consensus at Big Blue was that micro-computers were little more than "electrical toys", and most IBMers perceived involvement with these toys as being an embarrassment.

How the IBM PC came to be should have been made into a motion picture. There are several accounts of the story, but the most popular seems to be that in 1980, lacking both a micro-computer and an OS to run it, IBM first approached Gary Kidall, the creator of CP/M, to use CP/M as the OS for IBM's yet non-existent computer. But Kidall made himself unavailable, so IBM turned to Bill Gates for a solution. Bill Gates did not have an OS, but he promised to find one. Seattle based Tom Paterson had written an OS based on CP/M he called QDOS. Gates approached Paterson and offered to buy QDOS for around $50,000.

QDOS, the original version of Microsoft/IBM DOS was in fact terrible, and went through a decade of crashes and rewrites before the creation of Microsoft Windows, and I believe the Windows OS was actually OS/2, that IBM failed to make popular with its own proprietary computer, the PS/2.

IBM legitimized PCs using the OS that Bill Gates purchased. The association legitimized Microsoft. The result was that 400 small computer manufacturers went out of business almost overnight. It was two years later when IBM PC clones started showing up on the shelves of retail stores all across America.

The popularity of IBM Microsoft/DOS, is legendary. It wasn't up to par with some of the others, but when IBM put their name on it, it quickly became the standard by which all PCs were judged. Software that was designed to run on other computers, and not on the IBM PC were unsuccessful. While Apple maintained a substantial segment of the micro-computer business, no one could compete directly with IBM.

In many ways, Gates was like Henry Ford who wanted to build a car that 'the average man' could afford, but in order to eliminate competition, he had to make his operating system 'open' as opposed to being proprietary. As a result, every micro-computer programmer in the world had access to the Microsoft platform and this lowered the cost of computer software to a mere fraction of what you would have spent on software running on a 'closed system' like the IBM Sys/34 or Sys/36. Businesses, not knowing the difference between large computers and PCs, continued to buy new versions of Windows compatible software the day they were announced. There was no choice. Otherwise the new computer programs would not run under the older versions of the Microsoft operating system. Microsoft became a monopoly.

So here we are in 2015. We have a world saturated with computers running software that are dependent on the Microsoft operating systems, and another industry trying to figure out ways to keep the data from being stolen, sabotaged and copied by thousands (if not millions) of hackers who are dead set on theft, sabotaged, and exploration merely for the fun of it.

This is where the real fun begins. Today, Cyber Terrorism is a huge threat. In an environment with a open door for honest people to walk through, we are now concerned with seriously bad guys wanting to get into our systems for even more sinister reasons.

Data theft for profit is bad enough, but to use a network of computers in an open environment to literally destroy the economy of an entire nation, let alone the damage that can be done to large corporations and Mom & Pops, that's entirely different.

We are standing at a crossroads. It's only a matter of time before something unthinkable happens, and its time is overdue, because we will not be able to make an open system safe without slamming the back door and making them proprietary, and that could result in the resurgence of IBM.

IBM may have lost the lions share of computer business to Microsoft, but under the circumstances, we may soon be forced back to closed systems that will turn PCs into nothing more than intelligent computer terminals, and create an environment making it possible for us to operate over the Internet with impenetrable protection native to proprietary operating systems. PCs of the future will be limited to performing in-house functions, and turned over to large mainframe computers to provide integration and Internet traffic.

Because of its openness, it is technologically impossible to provide a secure, Cloud environment using the Microsoft OS. The Cloud, consisting of secure, closed, PROPRIETARY systems, and impenetrable hubs, manned by groups of highly professional computing engineers with extensive knowledge of data security, is the only answer that will keep our systems secure and safe against hackers and Cyber Terrorists. And equally as critical, it is the only way we can ever hope to safely integrate with trading partners and complete the supply chain.

***