1.3 Trends in Computing

As you can see, we are about to complete the third wave. In desktop-based computing, we have full access to information and services through a Web browser. In mobile computing, not quite. Only when we reach the convergence of desktop and mobile computing will we be ready to move forward to the fourth wave.

In a study by Forrester Research ^[13] , Carl D. Howe tries to identify the major issues with the third wave and why we need to move to the next level. While the Internet retains seeds of ongoing, sustained growth, Howe thinks that it needs to overcome three root problems:

^[13] The Forrester Report, May 2001, "The X Internet."

1. The Internet is dumb. This is because static Web pages presenting news, sports, and weather hardly improve the same content presented on papernor do they take advantage of the powerful computing systems delivering them.

2. The Internet is boring. This is because the bulk of Internet use comes from fetching static Web pages. Today's Internet experience is more like reading in a dusty library than basking in the birth of a new medium.

3. The Internet is isolated. Today's Internet is so remote from the real world that the media calls it by a different namecyberspace.

Although Howe might be exaggerating a bit here, he is not completely wrong. The big problem is that people think that the Web is the Internet and the Internet is the Web, making it difficult to understand the possibilities of the Internet beyond the Web.

As we move toward the fourth wave, we can see several trends (see Table 1.1) that are imminently affecting today's computing environment.

Table 1.1. Trends in Computing

We are able to see a set of trends in computing that will eventually lead to the fourth wave of computing, although in some areas we have not yet even reached the third wave.

• Increasing Bandwidth Internet traffic is growing exponentially and the telecommunications industry is introducing faster access technologies.

• Reducing Information Overload People are not able to find what they were looking for, because there is too much information available.

• Introducing Me-Centric Appliances The convergence of mobile telecommunications and computing devices creates a new set of intelligent me-centric devices.

• Automating Processes Companies start to use Internet technologies for automating internal and external processes.

• Using Personalization Services and information are presented in a personalized way to the users.

• Modularization A modular Internet can be adjusted more easily to the needs of the individual person or organization

• Web Services New services are about to be introduced on the Internet that are highly modular, personalized, automated, and available on all devices.

1.3.1 Bandwidth Growth

During the Internet hype phase of the late 1990s, the telecommunications industry laid down an astonishing amount of fiber. Although the hype is gone, the Internet traffic is still growing exponentially and more users join the network every day. The bandwidth soon to be available on the Internet backbone, as well as to many offices and neighborhoods, is immense.

Nonetheless, bandwidth to many end users will remain limited by several technical factors. Many users will still connect via analog modem, or at best, ADSL over the old telephone company copper wire loop. Many other users will connect via low-bandwidth wireless networks, such as the mobile phone or wireless LAN which allows up to 22 megabyte per second (Mbps) currently. Most users can expect to see no more than 128 Kbps to 10 Mbps available at their desktop or palmtop. Although this seems good enough for most services today, it is clear that future applications will require much higher bandwidths.

Perhaps more importantly, the gap between the so-called low-bandwidth "edge" of the network and the high-bandwidth "backbone" of the network will increase dramatically as the backbone benefits from increased quality and availability of fiber, while the edge remains limited by the fundamentals of wireless and copper connections. Currently, only about ten percent of the available backbone bandwidth is used, with users still experiencing slow and lagging networks on their ends. This also means that if a big backbone provider goes bankrupt, for example, it will not affect Internet traffic at all, except for some hiccups in the first few hours after shutdown. The focus on bandwidth growth needs to be placed on the edge of the network. New algorithms like DivX ^[14] , which makes it possible to reduce video sequences or complete movies to up to one hundredth of the original size, can help to overcome the bandwidth limitations by reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred.

^[14] http://www.divx.com/

ATM networks, for example, not only increase the bandwidth of the backbone, but also introduce some important new features to the network, such as Quality of Service (QoS), allowing for the introduction of high-speed multimedia services. We expect that this trend will continue even as local connections improve past 1 Mbps in the next few years , since backbone bandwidths are improving much faster than local bandwidths. It is easier to replace a single connection between two cities than to replace thousands or millions of edge connections. ^[15]

^[15] QoS is supported by IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), which makes it more likely that the Internet will be able to delivery QoS to the edge, eventually

1.3.2 Overcoming the Information Overflow

There appear to be two major factors affecting the ability of people to access information effectively: information literacy and application usability. Information literacy is the ability to effectively access and evaluate information for a given need. Application usability refers to the interactive environment that a software application or system provides to a user searching for information.

Information literacy is the human aspect of information access. The purpose of information literacy is to raise the levels of awareness of the knowledge explosion and understanding how computers can help identify, access, and obtain data and documents needed for problem solving and decision making.

Being able to understand what is required to find information is an important element in the process of overcoming information overload. Some skills that contribute to information literacy are problem solving, decision making, critical thinking, information gathering, and interpretation. These skills are needed in addition to a basic competence and familiarity with computers. The application usability side of information access requires that computer-based information systems be designed for ease of use. Important interface concerns include selection methods (command languages versus menus ) and representation methods (screen layout and graphic/text combinations).

We tend to think of machines as being good at processing information. The Internet started to become the most effective way to process information on a global scale. But in reality, Internet users are already overwhelmed by the sheer volume of available information, and the problem will get worse as the Internet grows and connections get faster. Search engines, shopbots, portals, collaborative filtering, and email filtering are existing technologies that allow the user to reduce the torrent to a manageable stream, but these technologies are still quite limited.

Computers can only process information according to programmed procedures, and these necessarily operate on known data or inferable judgments . What machines aren't yet very good at is mimicking the human power of making complex decisions based on ambiguity and uncertainty. Such questions as "Is this relevant right now?", "Why?", and "What information is missing here?" are far too complex for machines. Learning and processing information in this way are, like any human function, grounded in physiological processes that cannot be easily replicated by a computer. It'll be a very long time before a computer can write Romeo and Juliet . But we can't parallel-process or multi-task the way computers can. And we get tired after a few hours and need to nap and watch television to get our minds off the information.

If we are to successfully handle information overload in the future, we have two options: One is to restrict production of "excessive" information. The other is to use software intelligentlymeaning that we rely more on agents and search engines to distill information for us so that we may absorb it easier.

What we see today are general-purpose search engines that search everything. In the future, we will see more dedicated search engines that employ more specialized algorithms that will find particular types of information with a greater reliability. With the introduction of XML (see Chapter 6), each document will have a specified context, making it easier for the search engine to understand whether a certain piece of information is relevant.

Additionally, agents must be available as Web services that do a pre-selection of information based on the needs of the user. Armed with these two applications, the information overload problem will be less of a concern in the future.

1.3.3 Me-Centric Appliances

Me-centric appliances, of which there will be many in the future, are appliances we interact with that understand our intent and do what we want them to do. Such appliances will be one of the biggest areas of growth in the computer industry. Virtually every device will access Internet services to accomplish user tasks , even if users have no idea that such access is taking place. Moreover, new hardware products such as the Tablet PC and PDA/phone combinations are just starting to hit the market. Research indicates that by 2003 there will be over 1.25 billion mobile phone owners globally with Internet access, and that this number will increase exponentially in short order. This revolution in computer usage will be unleashed by founding computing architecture around knowledge of the user, giving the user the capability to delegate work to computers; thus, computing functionality will begin in the interface the user accesses to various devices, and then work will be tasked from this interface to various computers, applications, and intelligent agents distributed around the world on the Internet or its successors.

By 2006 the number of people who use data-enabled phones, PDAs, and other net-enabled devices is expected to exceed the worldwide Internet subscriber population. Much of this connectivity is at the expense of the PC, as more and more business users use wireless, mobile, and information appliances in their daily work. It is projected that in a few short years there will be three times as many of these devices worldwide as PCs. The result is that increasing numbers of people worldwide will first experience the Internet on a wireless device.

Typically, these devices today have unreliable, low-bandwidth, high-latency telephone or wireless network connections. A trend in mobile computing will be to make these connections more reliable and faster. This is not necessarily needed for phone calls, but through these better connections, these devices will be able to handle much more than pure voice traffic. Games , Web browsing, videos , and music, for example, will become accessible through these new devices, without having to set up additional antennas for these services.

The major reason why mobile devices are becoming very popular is the fact that many people don't want to miss the services and information they have on their desktop systems. They want to use them anywhere and anytime . Mobile computing also provides the enterprise with several compelling competitive advantages. It allows for faster, decentralized decision making and increases the responsiveness to customers. Through mobile computing, the sensitivity to market changes is increased and the time for staff to commute is lowered . As a direct result travel costs are reduced company-wide, and staff morale and productivity are increased. Probably the most obvious Internet service is e-mail. Through Web-based e-mail services, users can access their e-mail from any device, in any country, at any time.

Web terminals have become commonplace in public spaces, such as cafes, airports, and hotels. Eventually users will have full access to all of their files and applications from any terminal, as soon as the security and bandwidth problems have been solved and the technologies are standardized.

A new generation of mobile applications will be able to adapt themselves to the requirements of the user and include the context to reduce the amount of information the user has to enter. One clear trend in mobile computing is context-sensitive services. One simple example is a map service on the Internet. Today these services do not know where you are. In the future, they will receive your location as contextual information and will therefore be able to show you the right part of the map; the system knows what is of interest to you and therefore shows you the right restaurants , shops , and museums on the map and how to get there. Without the contextual information, the user is either overloaded with information or needs to specify the information manually each time. Map systems in cars (such as Hertz NeverLost ^[16] ) today know already where you are, because they are connected to the GPS system.

^[16] http://www.hertz.com/

The Internet infrastructure is changing to support these needs. One basic technology, IPv4 is being replaced by IPv6 ^[17] . This means that every device on earth can have its own IP address. With IPv4, the number of devices with their own IP addresses was very limited. Another important step is the introduction of QoS on the Internet. With this technology, it is possible to guarantee bandwidth or service availability, which can lead to the creation of service level agreements (SLA). This means, for example, that it becomes possible to view video and audio streams over the Internet in good and consistent quality. It also means that you can have a service-level agreement that you will be always connected. IPsec, also a new technology being introduced to the Internet, provides enhanced security features, making it more difficult to break into communication.

^[17] A detailed description of what this means can be found in Chapter 3 of the book The E-Business (R)Evolution by Daniel Amor, ISBN 013085123X, Prentice Hall.

Parallel to the rise of the devices is the development of new infrastructure and standards that will make mobile and wireless computing a reality. Wireless LANs, Bluetooth, 802.11, and other technologies are rapidly evolving, facilitating connectivity and access. Telecommunication firms around the globe are rolling out third-generation networks that promise increased capacity for data and information delivery. But as a measure of market penetration, the rapid acceptance of applications is more important than the rapid growth of applications.

Though the hardware and network resources are being established, the market for products and services has barely been tapped. IBM estimates the overall market for mobile services alone should equal 30.5 billion dollar/euro by 2003. Jupiter ^[18] Media Metrix estimates that U.S. wireless Web users will increase to 96 million by 2005.

^[18] http://www.jupiter.com/

Mobile entertainment alone is expected to be a 1 billion dollar/euro business in Europe this year. By 2004, one-third of all Europeans (which sums up to more than 219 million consumers) will regularly use their mobile phones to access Internet services. The Nordic countries , including Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, have wireless penetration rates above 70 percent. The next five years will see dramatic wireless subscriber growth, with the worldwide penetration rate doubling from 10.6 percent today to 21 percent in 2006. This continued growth has been marked by the long-awaited surge by China into first place, with the country passing the U.S. in wireless subscribers during the third quarter of 2002.

The Internet appliances used in the future will take on a variety of forms including wristwatches ^[19] , handhelds (much thinner and lighter than today's), and tablet devices. We will see a convergence of services into single devices (PDA, voice, and paging services on your handheld device, for example) and at the same time, a divergence toward single-use devices, such as earpiece/microphone units that communicate wirelessly with handheld devices. The limited screen size of the appliances will be overcome in many cases by "heads-up" displays embedded in eyeglasses that will become a technical fashion statement.

^[19] At Comdex 2002, Fossil showed a watch with Palm PDA and connectivity built in, for example

These devices will provide location-based, context-sensitive, just-in-time information and me-centric services. For example, as you drive to meet with a client, an alert could be routed automatically from your appointment calendar to your car's on-board computer about an impending merger involving the client.

1.3.4 Automation

Besides mobility, automation plays an important role in the future of computing. In the early days of the Internet, much of the emphasis was centered on processes initiated by people. For example, a person would visit a site, perform some searches, and then place an order.

While this model is acceptable for an individual, it falls short in cases where the purchase cycle tends to be repeated frequently, such as when a corporation purchases a variety of items from multiple sources. Requiring a person to manually perform a certain process can be time-consuming and error-prone . Automating such processes would certainly streamline a company's operations significantly.

Unfortunately, on the Web, the information returned from the transaction is a mix of presentation- related data (such as graphics and formatting instructions) and business data (such as product names , codes, and prices), and normally is not in a format that can be easily integrated into other systems. Consequently, someone needs to distinguish manually what is actually relevant in these interactions. Consider how expensive it is for a purchasing agent to re-enter information returned from a purchasing system into an accounting system. This seems rather antiquated, but many companies are still performing much of their processing manually because there are few, if any, standards for information that's being passed around. What is needed is a universal format or at least a way to separate business data from presentation data, which led to the invention of XML.

One hot area is B2E (business-to-employee) portals. Many organizations are increasingly using Internet protocols for their own needs for information distribution. All access to an intranet is managed by a single organization. Thus, new technologies can be deployed quickly, since little coordination is needed with outside organizations, and security (within the intranet) is of less concern.

In the first phase of a B2E portal project, employees get access to information, and then self-service features are introduced. In phase three, many tasks are automated to reduce the costs within the organization. While many companies have started to introduce internal information Web sites, the trend clearly moves towards self-service and automation.

1.3.5 Personalization

Unlike broadcast media, the Internet makes it possible to customize access for each user, as the users can provide some information about themselves. Web technologies allow customization at the client and the server. Many Web sites include their own site-specific customization features, but the customization is increasingly provided by third-party "proxy" sites. These proxy sites act as an intermediary between the service and the user. As a means to both reduce information overload and customize service access, proxy sites will become more and more important. In particular, as portable devices become more prevalent , highly specialized proxy sites will be provided to meet the special needs of mobile users. These sites can transform information and services in such a way that they are easily usable from any device.

The way your personal assistant will ultimately be implemented might best be thought of as a personalized intelligent proxy that aggregates knowledge about you and your environment, and intermediates transactions with various agents to employ your resources appropriately.

1.3.6 Modularity

One of the goals of IT architecture, in the integration stage, is to create applications that can be easily extended to handle new interface devices. However, opening the IT applications is more than just putting a new interface to an old system. Practices that were acceptable in-house are no longer acceptable on the Web or a mobile device. A customer expects data to be consistent across all applications the company provides; he also expects fast access and no downtime, twenty-four hours a day.

The IT industry is not finding the integration stage easy, for three main reasons. The first is a huge legacy of existing applications that run businesses and are not easily changed. The second is that internal IT organization and methodologies are designed around the notion of funding, developing, testing, and deploying standalone applications, not integrated systems. Third, to serve integration well, there needs to be better cooperation between IT and business.

It's difficult today to find a single Web site that will solve multiple problems. For example, consider a consumer who wants to book an entire vacation online (flight, car, lodging, and local activities). The traveller or travel agent has to cobble together a package by visiting multiple sites and then ensure that all the relevant criteria, such as identification, dates, and locations are matched. Often, you end up giving the same information at multiple sites. Anyone who has ever planned a vacation has experienced the amount of work involved.

This clumsy user experience exists because it's currently too difficult for the site operators to break the sites into discrete sets of subprocesses that can be merged or integrated into an experience that's relevant to the consumer. The reason for this is the lack of standards that would make integration seamless. The focus of each site is narrow; typically the riding school is offering riding instruction, and the airline is offering flight services. A vacation could be composed of visiting a riding school in a certain location and using a certain transportation vehicle, e.g., a riding school in Pisa, Italy, with accommodation on a farm nearby. As far as the user is concerned , all of these events have to be scheduled and booked to accomplish his overall goal. Unfortunately, the site that offers riding instruction has no way of knowing that the consumer visiting the site is the same person who's staying at a local hotel on a particular date. Without that little detail, the riding site would have to ask for that information again. If you want to book your holidays individually and not in a package, it can become quite complicated to organize all the bits and pieces that are necessary to make it a nice vacation. And even Web sites of travel agents are not good enough to book complete holidays online.

You can see that most of the trends today are moving towards mobility and automation. These two features are key requirements for a me-centric computing world. Only if we can provide all services and information anywhere, at any time, through any device, can we build an automated me-centric world.

1.3.7 Mobility

Mobility is becoming a key concern for corporations worldwide. Executives are looking to extend the functionality and information accessible on the desktop to the PDAs, phones, and laptops they carry and use regularly. The need for this extended network is growing. But the key question remainswhy undertake the effort? Why create connectivity at all times? What is the benefit to the corporate bottom line? Companies are turning to these systems to boost productivity, slash operating costs, improve competitive advantage, and cultivate customer loyalty.

In today's scenario for mobility, the majority of wireless services are delivered by a mobile network operator (large wireless carriers ) to end-users via a mobile phone. These services are predominantly voice-centric. In fact, the majority of mobile network operator revenue today is derived from voice. Because of this the mobile phone today is the primary device used to communicate wirelessly in a wide-area network, mobile network operators (who are provisioning service to the end-user via the mobile phone) tend to have a fairly strong relationship with the customer.

A connectivity that brings the power of the Internet provides for quicker access to information and transforms the work environment. Remaining competitive in today's global business environments means that organizations are constantly looking for ways to quickly and easily extend the reach of their most powerful applications, data, and services to users around the globe. Driven by the promise of increased efficiencies, businesses are looking to provide mobile workers, trading partners , clients , and customers access to corporate and commercial applications and content. FedEx ^[20] and UPS ^[21] have being doing this for some time and, in the process, revolutionizing the delivery business. There is virtually no transportation company without online tracing.

^[20] http://www.fedex.com/

^[21] http://www.ups.com/

Similarly, the application of wireless technologies is clear for many industries. For example, to close a sale, a salesperson visiting a prospective customer might need to access an ERP system to view inventory details and establish availability in real-time. What are the sales possibilities? A utility company worker could move from job to job by information accessed through a handheld tablet instead of going back to the central office to grab the next clipboard and assignment. A businessman could manage his sales force automation programs through a wireless device. And in fleet management, supply chain solutions, CRM, and corporate information, wireless access can provide for substantial efficiencies. Some more detailed examples can be found in Chapter 2.

Applications will be smart and use multiple sources of data to minimize the time to relevant data.

Consider the following scenario: Richard, a salesperson, synchronizes his mobile device prior to leaving for work in the morning. A smart application uses the appointments on his calendar to proactively download driving instructions between meetings, linking calendar, address book, and third-party mapping services. Up-to-date account information from his company's CRM application is preloaded as well, linking calendar and CRM applications, ensuring that Richard can answer any questions that may arise. During the day, Richard's afternoon flight is delayed and his travel system sends his wireless device an alert. This alert includes a list of alternative flights that Richard can take to his destination, preventing him from having to search for this information later. That afternoon, as he boards his rescheduled flight, Richard checks his stock portfolio by using an application that downloads the prices every fifteen minutes during the trading day. These examples show how smart applications anticipate what a user will need and proactively bring the information onto the mobile device where a user can access it quickly without depending on wireless network availability or access speeds.

This need for information and access to applications is not confined to the business market. Wireless solutions providing entertainment, shopping, and travel services will be available to the consumer market. Instant messaging, games and other entertainment offerings are swiftly being embraced by the youth market and transforming the way people interact. In the education market, the wireless network is transforming the way students learn, providing the ability for a personalized curriculum and greater assistance for teachers and students.

While the "promise" these examples offer is compelling, the present realities are quite different. Current software and information products are not optimized (or ready at all) to deal with the limitations of the small form factor handheld device. Most offerings were developed for the PC and did not contemplate alternative access methods. Moreover, the current infrastructure is not sufficiently complete to transfer large amounts of data across wireless networks. These challenges remain key obstacles to the rapid adoption of wireless devices as tools of the trade.

In the new scenario for mobility, the business relationship with customers is likely to be spread across multiple categories of players (both new and existing) as they will compete and collaborate to drive new services to the end-user.

Mobile network operators face a new set of challenges including new competition with other types of mobile service providers (WLAN service providers, proprietary network service providers, mobile virtual network operators) and the additional complexity of deploying IP-based networks (GPRS/3G, content distribution, multi-access portals).

Enterprises see mobility as a way to not only make their own operations more efficient, but also to drive new services to their customers to increase loyalty and revenue. End-users will value those services that are highly personalized and relevant not to just the different environments (work, home, car, customer site) but also to their roles (mobile professional, consumer, parent, spouse, friend, etc.).

It's clear that mobility is a force to be considered as we move into the next wave of computing. Here's a final, simple example of how organizations are dealing with this today:

CityCab, ^[22] a taxi operator located in Singapore, is one of the largest taxi operators in the world with about 9,800 drivers and a fleet of 5,000 vehicles. Hewlett-Packard, ^[23] CityCab, and Ericsson ^[24] have jointly invested $5.5 million to transform the operations of CityCab and to revolutionize the customer experience. CityCab's mobile solution lets passengers surf the web, send e- mails , check stock prices, catch up on the latest news, and even print information such as distance traveled and total fareall from the back of the cab. Additionally, taxi drivers are able to use handheld appliances to access mapping and routing info , accept e-payment options, or process bookings. They will also be able to use dispatch services that allow them to see where customer demand is concentrated at any given time and bypass the Customer Contact Centre. This increases the total number of passengers that CityCab can service during a day because the dispatch services now are linked directly to their devices.

^[22] http://www.citycab.com.sg/

^[23] http://www.hp.com/

^[24] http://www.ericsson.com/

1.3.8 Software as a Service

In light of the new wireless environment, software delivered as a service becomes a driving factor. To ensure that the functionality of an application on a wireless device is the same as its desktop PC equivalent, while also assuring that it can be mobile, software and information developers will need to optimize applications to reside on servers and modularize code to deliver just what is needed to provide users access to a consistent user experience. In a world dominated by wireless communications, this will be defined by server-resident applications accessible from any device at any time, presented in a format appropriate to the device itself.

However, the current capabilities of small devices cannot match the power of the desktop PC. In reality, most mobile devices fall short even in terms of what is needed to ensure that the wireless paradigm is effective. To ensure the same functionality of the application while also assuring that it can be mobile, software and information developers will need to optimize applications to reside on servers and modularize code to deliver just what is needed to provide users rapid computing and access to up-to-date information efficiently and effectively. A consistent user experience in a world dominated by wireless communications will be defined by server-resident applications accessible from any device at any time, presented in a format appropriate to the device itself.

We are already seeing independent software vendors (ISVs) that develop wireless servers, mobile middleware, and databases that serve as the backend for the mobile device access. New so-called Wireless Applications Service Providers (WASPs) are being founded to build, integrate, host, and manage the wireless components of mobile e-business systems.

ISVs will also need to deliver applications that can be used while mostly disconnected and occasionally using the wireless infrastructure to synchronize their activities. Models will vary based on the development requirements and consumer preferences. What is clear is that the rise in wireless devices will ultimately go hand in hand with software as a service, significantly driving its demand and development.