You'll Be Happier with Android and the Cloud

You'll be happier with Android, Gmail, and Chrome than you can possibly imagine," Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told the IT audience at Gartner Symposium yesterday evening in a wide-ranging conversation covering everything from a big-picture discussion of technology in the economy to Android security.

The heart of the conversation with Gartner analysts David Willis and Drew Reeves focused on changes in the way IT departments deliver technology. In the first phase of the enterprise IT cycle, Schmidt said, the focus was on sales per seat (such as by Oracle) and the incumbents still use that model today. In the second phase, we combined cloud computing with the intranet model, with internal applications protected using VPNs and gateways and in a "fair fight" with Internet applications such as Google and Amazon Web Services.

In the third phase, employees bringing their own mobile devices, particularly tablets, "broke the model," Schmidt said. He told the audience they should dismantle much of the existing infrastructure and replace it with one that works with this new model. In particular, he said the reliance on VPNs is outdated, as it's crazy to imagine the open pathways to port 80 are secure. "Are you sure the Chinese aren't in the network?" he asked. Instead, he said it is better for an organization not to have an intranet, just the network, and impose security on an application to application basis.

"If you're starting new, you would never have a data center," Schmidt said. Instead, you would build your business on cloud services, such as Google Apps, Salesforce, and Workday. Today this works for an organization up to about 1,000 people.

For larger and existing companies, he suggested cloud as an email replacement first (what the company calls "Going Google") through email, and saying that will lead to more sharing through Google Drive. "We love email," he said, noting that despite questions about whether email is obsolete, corporations still run by email. He said there are five million enterprise users of Google Apps, for which the company charges roughly $60 a year. Sharing is particularly important he said, talking about the advantage of calendar sharing (including family calendars) and editing documents, such as his collaboration with Jared Cohen on their book The New Digital Age.

Later he said companies should consider things like the Google Compute Engine or perhaps Amazon Web Services. He said Google Compute Cloud is architecturally faster and should be cheaper than competing solutions, but the most important thing is for organizations to recognize they need to make a transition from the incumbent model to the new model. The cloud model doesn't have "overpriced versions each year that you have to upgrade," he said. And you don't have to test for compatibility because so many people use the services, and "no credible cloud vendor is going to break anything."

In the cloud computing model, he said, you pay for what you use and prices are lower, with better scale, better security, and a better architecture, Schmidt said. And incumbent vendors aren't moving to the cloud in a way that is scalable. Overall, he stated the cloud is more secure and safer than your own data centers.

"Android is very secure," Schmidt said, adding that Android has more than one billion users, more than any other platform, and has 1.3 million activations a day. He said Android is more secure than the iPhone and took a big swipe at "legacy systems," particularly Windows XP, which needs to be kept up to date. You don't have that problem with mobile, he said, noting you don't need to lock down the phone like you lock down the PC. He dismissed questions about Android fragmentation, saying the company has an agreement with all its key partners, including Samsung, to keep the app store working and competitive.

Asked by the Gartner analysts about his own question about Chinese hackers, he said, "We're quite sure they're not right now, but every second we check." He said 80 percent of cyber attacks are Chinese in origin, mostly looking for intellectual property.

On the more general economic issues, Schmidt said almost every business can be made more efficient by using software and that "any industry that doesn't have software people embedded somewhere inside of it is going to be behind." He noted Google's "big bets" in areas like health care and transportation, saying the company wants to take risks with up to 10 percent of its assets, such as the autonomous car.

In particular, he is bullish about the impact of technology in transportation infrastructure, especially outside the United States and education, where he says we now have the ability not only to try new ideas, but measure them.

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