Aug 27 2008
What will salespeople use for their next computer operating system? (And why the heck should they care?)
First of a six-part series
In order to be competitive today, virtually all sales professionals must use computers. They need rapid access to information about their industry, customers, prospects, competitors, and their own organizations’ products and services, and the computer is the ideal device for finding, storing and retrieving this information.
Most people think of computers in terms of hardware: the central processing unit, storage, disk drives, keyboard and display, among other components. But hardware is simply the “flesh and blood” of a computer - its “soul” is the operating system (OS).
Simply put, the OS is the first thing a computer loads when it is turned on. It provides the rules which define how the computer recognizes all its hardware, how the components will work together, how it will run software programs, and how it will interact with the user. And so, most of the experience of using a computer is defined by the operating system.
For almost two decades, by far the most commonly used OS has been Microsoft Windows. Today, more than 90% of all personal computing devices use some version of Windows, worldwide.
But is Microsoft’s long-held hegemony over the OS landscape slipping? Could alternative operating systems challenge Windows, and give users - including sales professionals - more choice in how they use their computers? And most importantly, would any shifts in the OS market help or hinder salespeople as they try to do their jobs?
Over the next five days, we’ll examine the state of the principal operating systems used today, and try to get some insight about how their evolution might affect sales professionals - and what they should do to prepare.
Next in this series: Microsoft Windows - XP, Vista, version 7, and Mobile
[...] In part one of this series, we defined what an operating system (OS) is, and speculated that changes in the most significant OS platforms could affect the way that salespeople do their jobs over the next few years. In this part, we focus on the most dominant OS in use worldwide today. [...]
[...] In Part One of this series, we defined what an operating system (OS) is, and speculated that changes in the most significant OS platforms could affect the way that salespeople do their jobs over the next few years. In this part, we focus on perhaps the most visible alternative to Microsoft Windows (which we covered in Part Two of this series). [...]
[...] In Part One of this series, we defined what an operating system (OS) is, and speculated that changes in the most significant OS platforms could affect the way that salespeople do their jobs over the next few years. In this part, we focus on the most commonly-used open source alternative OS. [...]
[...] In Part One of this series, we defined what an operating system (OS) is, and speculated that changes in the most significant OS platforms could affect the way that salespeople do their jobs over the next few years. In this part, we speculate about what could be emerging as a new OS alternative. [...]
[...] In Part One of this series, we defined what an operating system (OS) is, and speculated that changes in the most significant OS platforms could affect the way that salespeople do their jobs over the next few years. In this part, we summarize our findings and provide sales professionals with some clear recommendations about the kind of OS they should use. [...]