In the home these days more people than ever are integrating devices with multiple screens into their lives. It’s not uncommon for people to watch television while perusing something on the Internet using a tablet device to find something related to what they are watching. More advanced users are even using their big screen televisions as displays for videoconferencing applications while continuing to work on the local PCs.
John Koller, vice president of home consoles and handheld displays for Sony, says it won’t be long before multi-screen usage becomes more common in the office. Not only can the latest version of Windows operating systems more easily drive multiple displays, people are finding it handy to be able to share files in a conference room using a large-screen system that is connected to their mobile computing devices.
Much of this capability is being driven by how easy it has become to shares files across multiple systems using cloud computing services. Whether it’s using consumer-grade services such as Dropbox.com or any one of several enterprise-class services, the ability to seamlessly transfer files between systems is changing the nature of collaboration in the office.
For IT folks looking to do something relatively small that could have a big impact on how people perceive IT, deploying large-screen systems that can be easily controlled from a mobile computing device could be a smart thing to enable. Not only will the conversation flow more naturally in those meetings, people will get more value out of their favorite mobile computing devices.
Not everything in IT needs to about strategic returns on investment. In fact, more often than not it’s really about just making it easier for the average person to do something that makes their daily working life that much easier.
