Designed to address the biggest IT challenges faced by companies, Google, Dell, Intel, and a number of other tech companies have come together to form the Modern Computing Alliance. Box, Citrix, Imprivata, Okta, RingCentral, Slack, VMware, and Zoom are the other founding members of the group.
Notably, tech giants like Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon aren't included. Some have speculated that this alliance has been constructed as an opportunity to gain some market share over these mammoth companies.
According to Dell, it joined the group to drive an “open and innovative ecosystem” to enable customers to get the most from their Chrome OS experiences.
The ultimate mission is to “drive ‘silicon-to-cloud’ innovation for the benefit of enterprise customers and fuel a differentiated modern computing platform and providing additional choice for integrated business solutions.”
“Specifically, the alliance will define an open collaboration approach for both hardware and software — from the cloud to the PC — that will bring new industry-level innovation to the market at-scale through Google’s Chrome commercial ecosystem,” said Chris Walker, General Manager of the Mobile Client Platforms Group at Intel, in a statement.
Issues the Modern Computing Alliance will attempt to tackle include performance, security and identity, healthcare, remote work, productivity, and collaboration. For example, to address performance issues, it will invest in creating a seamless, user-friendly experience. It can do this by increasing video and audio quality in Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) by leveraging hardware-based capabilities and platform optimizations.
According to Google, healthcare is included in the list because providers need to improve their ROI on technology so that they can improve patient outcomes and reduce IT costs.
The Modern Computing Alliance also aims to enhance the productivity of the distributed workforce. According to Google, in order to achieve this, IT needs transparency, simplified administration, and analytics for users and devices, while employees need better workflows to make the most of their tools. The alliance will provide silicon-to-cloud telemetry insights and analytics, as well as recommendations for optimizing workflows and automating repetitive tasks.
“We’ll create more advanced cloud data security and improve data loss prevention solutions,” said John Solomon, VP for Chrome OS at Google. “The Alliance will enhance the productivity of an increasingly distributed workforce by providing telemetry insights across the stack.”
