All,
Some interesting reading...
By Ed Zander
The image of a large iceberg always comes to mind
when people ask me about the Internet's future.
A lot of companies are sailing directly toward that
iceberg, assuming that they've correctly sized it and
know how to handle it. And they are so misguided.
The Internet iceberg can be extremely deceptive. On
the surface, it is relatively large, and this fact alone has
impressed a lot of people. They have changed the way
they serve customers and operate internally, and they
think that's basically the end of the story. It's
champagne-and-caviar time for these folks: Their data
centers can handle modest Internet activity, their
customers are satisfied, and they're sailing blissfully
into the open waters of the Net economy.
What they don't understand is that the Internet is
growing to such a massive scale that many companies
and their products will be ill-prepared to handle it,
despite their recent ''dot-comming'' efforts. Not only
will the Internet grow above the surface, but beneath
the water it also will reach proportions beyond most
people's wildest projections.
Still young
It's important to realize the Internet has completed only
its third or fourth year as a major technology disrupter,
a role that will last 10 to 15 years and affect society as
thoroughly as the auto industry did a century earlier. A
steadily increasing number of people, machines and
data connecting to the Internet will fuel this growth,
introducing new demands on the supporting
infrastructure and ushering in a new way of life.
First, the existing Web continues to expand at a
phenomenal pace. In just the past 24 hours, 2 million
new Web pages, 196,000 new Internet-access devices
and 147,000 new Web users were added. By 2002,
there will be more Web pages than people on the
planet.
Web offshoots
Second, the Web will grow entirely new parts. Using
devices that are either unconnected or not yet invented,
the Net will expand deeper into our world and connect
to just about anything with an electric heartbeat. We will
expect these devices to be Web-ready, just as we
expect every building to have electrical outlets. These
devices not only will connect us to the Net but also to
each other, and often will bypass humans altogether.
Data from weather services will activate your sprinkler
system, your car will tell your house when you're almost
home so the lights will be on, and your alarm clock will
tell your heater when you'll wake up. In fact, 15 years
from now, humans may see less than 1% of the data
pulsing through the Net.
This doesn't mean that your direct interaction with the
Internet will level off or even drop. It only means that
rather than be in the spotlight, as it is now, the Net will
act as the spotlight that illuminates our life and makes
things easier.
Soon, for instance, you will be able to program your
VCR from work, transfer digital photos to the Web
instantaneously and download newly purchased music
to your home stereo. Automakers such as Ford and
General Motors have announced cars that read your
e-mail, check your stock portfolio and access online
city maps.
If only a fraction of the 14 million cars and trucks made
annually in the United States have this capability --
and if only a fraction of the 27 million TVs, 19 million
VCRs and 10 million audio systems sold each year are
connected to the Internet -- the overall growth of the
Net nevertheless will be staggering.
Biz-to-biz growth
Another factor is that established firms are putting a
massive amount of the business they do with their
suppliers and partners online, saving themselves
substantial costs. Analysts expect this
business-to-business e-commerce -- which already
more than quadruples consumer e-commerce in size
-- to grow from $145 billion last year to $7.3 trillion
in 2004.
This means that during the next 15 years or so, the
Internet infrastructure may easily grow to at least 100
times its current size and inhale today's capacity levels
for a midnight snack. We already see indications of this
kind of growth: Today, a single dot-com company can
go through about as many terabytes of data as the
entire Internet consumed just a few years ago.
As Internet traffic gets heavier and heavier, consumers
will see a battle royal among companies that want to
support it with industrial-strength solutions that adapt
to this growth. This means products and services
designed for the Net -- whether they're e-mail
offerings, online-banking programs or servers -- must
be able to increase capacity while still being easy to use
and manage. Using products that can't add capacity
and adapt with the expanding Internet will be like
asking telephone-switchboard operators of the 1920s
to handle today's massive levels of phone activity. It
will be impossible.
This is great news for consumers, because over time
they will be the ones who will reap the benefits of an
Internet that will be just as fast and reliable as the
telephone. But first, some will crash headlong into the
Internet iceberg.
Some telecommuters, for instance, will lose precious
time and money as they wait for computers, digital
assistants and appliances to access data on the Net.
Meanwhile, their counterparts who use other services
will enjoy almost-instant access. Some unfortunate
souls will try to tap into online stock-trading services
using cell phones, but will cancel their attempts after
waiting 6 minutes for access. Others will complete their
tasks in one-third that time.
And what about those businesses, consumers and
individual investors who aren't really concerned about
these Internet icebergs? Well, I think we all know what
happened to the folks on the Titanic.
Ed Zander is president and chief operating officer of
Sun Microsystems Inc. |
