How PaaS could drive sustainability into the PC market
PaaS, or “PCs-as-a-Service,” is a concept we’ve been chasing under different terms ever since we moved from mainframes and terminals. The irony is that back when the mainframe was dominant, computing was a service. You didn’t initially buy a mainframe; you leased it and effectively paid for monthly. Then a focus on short-term profits kicked in and hardware went from predominantly leased to predominantly sold. That change turned what was a surprisingly green technology industry into the forklift upgrade, anything-but-green alternative we have today.
PaaS is the result of our desperate plea to go back to that more sustainable past.
At the moment, no one is doing PaaS right – outside of cable companies who still mainly operate on that model and are becoming obsolete. But cloud services, virtual operating systems, 5G, and an increasing desire to save the planet are driving us back to a mainframe-like model, albeit with entirely different hardware.