> between mobile and these little bad boys, there's plenty of power around to run a number of applications that would have required a rack server 5 or 10 years ago. Now John Accountant could just buy a little silent box and put it on his desk, without having to go through hellish rounds of IT approvals.
Which would be nice, if we had the hardware of today with the IT practices of a time when enterprises might exert centralized control of departmental server purchases but not exert the same control over individual desktop system purchases and even the software installation on those desktops.
Today, I was working at the HQ of a major UK telco. I connected my personal MBP to a random ethernet cable and lo, I could RDP on servers and do everything I wanted, without any prior authorisation. If you think all enterprise networks are as locked down as the ones found in banks, you're sorely mistaken. BYOD is a reality.
Which would be nice, if we had the hardware of today with the IT practices of a time when enterprises might exert centralized control of departmental server purchases but not exert the same control over individual desktop system purchases and even the software installation on those desktops.