September 3, 1999
The Changing World of Commerce and Communications
by Craig Barrett
Delivering the Building Blocks for the Internet Economy
The Internet economy is here today, but the work of building an infrastructure capable of supporting its accelerated growth has just begun. Intel CEO and President Craig Barrett takes a closer look at the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
developer.intel.com
Delivering the Building Blocks for the Internet Economy The Internet economy is here today, but the work of building an infrastructure capable of supporting its accelerated growth has just begun. Here's a closer look at the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead as the development community works together to advance the Internet.
There's no question that the Internet has had a huge influence in changing our culture, our communications, and the way in which we do business?all within the unbelievably short timeframe of less than ten years. As recently as a decade ago, the Internet was a little-known network used by just a few scientists and Department of Defense people, and the World Wide Web didn't even exist on the communications landscape. It's hard to believe how quickly the online phenomenon has taken root, and how it's changing everything. Just as the expansion of railroads changed the face of commerce in the 1830s and the growth of interstate highways transformed transportation in the 1950s, the Internet and the Web are fundamentally altering the way people live, play and work. The principal difference, of course, is the speed of change that we're facing today.
By any measure, the growth of the Internet has been nothing short of astounding, and it's a growth that's going to accelerate even faster in the next few years. As we stand on the threshold of a new century, we're moving rapidly toward a world of a billion connected computers?and with it, a trillion connected dollars. The accelerating Internet economy is everywhere, and within a few years the distinction between homes and businesses with and without Internet access will no longer exist. That's because virtually all homes and businesses will be part of the rapidly evolving e-commerce world of online communications.
According to a recent Internet Commerce Market Model from IDC, more than 100 million users and 100 million computing devices now have Web access, representing a growth of more than tenfold in each category since 1995. By 2002, however, IDC forecasts that there will be some 300 million users and almost 500 million devices accessing the Web. And while in 1998 less than one percent of all gross domestic product (GDP) was generated over the Internet, that figure is expected to rise to ten percent of the GDP?approximately one trillion dollars?by 2002.
These trends combine to illuminate a strategic inflection point in the way business is conducted and people communicate. And as with all strategic inflection points, this particular one?advancing the Internet?presents its share of challenges and opportunities. That's because, in order for the Internet economy to truly flourish and live up to its considerable potential, we as an industry clearly need to develop a robust Internet infrastructure capable of supporting sustained growth. And we need to develop it at a faster pace than the one at which we've been moving to truly provide headroom for growth.
Building the Internet Infrastructure
First and foremost, it will take a concerted industry effort based on the adoption and proliferation of open specifications to lay the groundwork for the Internet infrastructure. That effort must be accelerated. It took five years, after all, to fully adopt the Universal Serial Bus (USB) as a computing platform standard; we have to drive open Internet specifications faster than that if we're to realize the full potential of the medium.
Simplicity and availability are also key. That's because, as ubiquitous as the PC may now seem to be, many people still don't have one because they think that computers are too hard to use. This is a barrier that must be overcome. Equally important, the bandwidth, services and content that define a truly robust Internet economy need to be provided and developed. Deployment is another significant issue: less than four percent of the network servers that will be needed to support the users and devices clamoring for online access by 2002 are now in place.
All of these requirements translate into wonderful opportunities for platform developers, as the pace of integration rises and semiconductor production migrates down to 0.18-micron geometry's. This continued technology innovation and leadership in process technology is paving the way for increasing levels of value-added innovation to be included in the building blocks that will be required to create the Internet Economy. By building blocks, I'm specifically referring to client platforms, a network infrastructure, and server platforms?all of which will be supplemented by associated solutions and services that sit on top of the platform foundation.
In the client platform arena, we must build a compelling and easy-to-use variety of computing devices that provide Internet access. We must deliver intelligent networks driven by an open, interoperable communications infrastructure, and we must develop server platforms that provide performance, scalability, value and flexibility. When you look at the effort and innovation it's going to take, the message for the developer community is clear: the growth of the Internet Economy is in our hands.
From the Business to the Home: The Internet is Everywhere
Within the Internet economy, two truths are evident: all homes will become e-homes, and all business is moving to e-business. The infrastructure of the e-home, for example, will ultimately include multiple networked devices tying all rooms together via broadband connections. All of these devices, of course, will tie into a performance PC that will act as the central server and intelligence for the e-home network.
The e-home will also feature privacy and secure Internet access, a much broader use of online capabilities, and all kinds of new content and services. Our challenge as developers is to make the term "Internet User" obsolete by making everyone an Internet user, and rendering the term irrelevant. By providing easy-to-use Internet platforms, we can ensure that every home will ultimately be connected.
In the world of business, meanwhile, e-commerce is already taking off. The Internet is driving a convergence of voice and data traffic that's dramatically changing the face of modern communications?and with it, the challenges facing developers and service providers alike. As in the case of the e-home, the performance PC will be a staple of all e-business environments. From base applications to automated data components, interoperable communications to improved user interfaces, better knowledge management software to increasingly sophisticated content and services, there's all sorts of headroom for innovation. And it will take considerable innovation to meet the client and server platform demands of the evolving Internet economy.
IA-64: Fueling the Internet Economy
When it comes to creating infrastructure building blocks, Intel's IA-64 server and workstation roadmap identifies succeeding generations of processors that will provide the performance, integration and compatibility that the Internet economy will require. As our demos at the Fall '99 Intel Developer Forum illustrate, the IA-64 is up and running today in the form of the Merced processor, targeted to meet the high-end digital content creation and distribution needs of the workstation and server markets. Intel will be providing initial Merced samples to OEMs within the next few weeks, with volume production right on schedule for the first half of next year.
As an architecture that has been developed with the evolving requirements of the Internet economy in mind, the IA-64 is poised to assume a leading role as the new engine for e-business. It provides faster interactive transactions and high availability, which facilitate easy customization capabilities and ensure continuous service. Its ability to support large amounts of memory enables it to provide the responsiveness that Internet users want, and its encryption capabilities enable it to offer the security that Internet users need.
Armed with these advanced platform capabilities, the IA-64 provides the industry with the means to develop the technological building blocks that will help to create an infrastructure capable of supporting the tremendous growth of the Internet in the years to come. The truly exciting part of all this is that the growth of the infrastructure is in our hands. We're engaged in creating a world in which all homes are e-homes, and all business is e-business. I look forward to the challenges and opportunities that lie in store for all of us in pursuit of this goal, as we work together to advance the Internet in the years to come.
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