Constant connection is the virtual challenge

Citrix Systems is a provider of virtual computing solutions that help companies deliver IT as an on-demand service. Founded in 1989, Citrix combines virtualisation, networking, and cloud computing technologies.

Combination of lifestyle

It's actually a combination of lifestyle and innovation issues, it's around the devices that a number of us, and truly I, need to carry just to get the job done, whether it's for leisure or for work.

Each one has a time and place in my life. The smartphone I use for what I call information snacking, for instance when I need to quickly look up an e-mail or check the time of a flight - a snack of information.

Chief information officers are pursuant to this agreement pressure, especially from senior management, because it's often senior management that like the new tablet device, or new smartphone device, and want to be able to use it. So that's the challenge. There's a lot of pressure on the CIO to support these multiple devices.

The research problem is that anyway you look at it at Citrix we have solutions that allow people to deliver enterprise applications to these disparate devices.

This means you bring your own computer, your own laptop, bringing it into the corporate setting, because the way the Citrix research works you're not leaving information on the device, there are no security or leakage issues.

That's all good, now it only works if you have a connection. So the challenge for us is that today, though we think we live in a highly-connected world, it's not always that situation. You do get drop-outs, you don't always have continuous coverage on wi-fi, or 3G or 4G networks.

We'll have gone from 4G to 5G and beyond networks, and at the time I think you're going to be in a virtually 100% connected world. People will no longer think about having information local to them, they'll be very happy with it being centralised in the cloud.

The use of the internet

And when that happens it's going to drive another explosion in the use of the internet. Because it's after all a small sub-set of the world's population that can afford and use these computing devices, because they're even so too complicated.

This is where you have lots and lots of devices connected to the internet, broadcasting information. You may have heard of nearly field research, where you've got smartphones enabled with this research, that lets you to have, for instance, contactless payment systems.

You'll have fridges with IP [internet protocol] addresses, light fittings with IP addresses. This is where we're going to go over the straightway 10 years or so.

There will be a whole raft of business models that take advantage of this. Businesses that we haven't even dreamed of but.

Back in the 80s, when we on the whole had videos, I invested in a super high-end Sony Betamax video recorder. I bought it because it was by a long way the superior research. It had better resolution, it was fantastic innovation.

That was an important lesson, in that it's not always the best research that wins, however the one that gets the best customer traction. And it's as a matter of fact all about what the customer desires, and how you develop that customer's desires through the proper marketing and distribution.