Go Boldly

Bandwidth is cheap; end users are mobile and connected; convergence of voice, video and data has occurred; and core network services are being handled by outsourcers.

That's the future, according to corporate technology visionaries. They say it's too early to lay down all your chips on any particular technology, especially in emerging areas such as last-mile broadband connectivity or wireless access devices. But now is the time to put on your game face, take an aggressive stance and begin laying the groundwork.

"You need to be bold in your forecasts of what technologies will change the marketplace," says Gary Habermann, director of technical resources for Widener University in Chester, Pa. "We put ATM in in 1996; now we have the infrastructure we need to deploy competitive technologies ahead of our competitors."

Within three years, Widener's ATM backbone will be carrying voice, data and video traffic. The university's security, heating and cooling systems will also be on the converged network. And the ATM LAN will provide a staging ground for classes presented to remote students over multicast video.

Indeed, corporate visionaries say that technology-driven advances, particularly electronic commerce, will fundamentally change the way companies do business in virtually every industry.

In fact, information-intensive fields, such as publishing, education and financial services, are already being affected by the fact that the Web provides a vehicle for distributing information at practically no cost. "The e-commerce environment will remove a large percentage of how certain industries add value," predicts Dave Anderson, Amdahl Corp. chief technology officer.

For example, as shopping online becomes the norm rather than the exception for a broadening segment of the retail industry, physical stores will either vanish or change into something fundamentally different. "Bookstores like Barnes and Noble will become entertainment destinations where friends can meet over a latte, or attend a book discussion group,'' Anderson says.

Savvy companies will anticipate these changes and redefine themselves to stay viable in the emerging e-commerce environment. And network technology will drive those changes.

For example, the electronic movement of documents is eating into the letter and document delivery business, says Doug Fields, vice president of application development in marketing, customer service and telecommunications at United Parcel Service. So UPS is aggressively exploring how it can add value in this area: for example, guaranteeing security, confidentiality and end-to-end delivery of electronic documents.

In the health care field, HealthData Resources is developing technology that will allow hospitals to deliver health information to corporate and individual clients over the Internet, according to Ed Risinger, the company's president. In 10 years, Risinger predicts, patients will be able to download from the hospital the information they need to make an informed choice about treatment based on their individual profile. Right now, HealthData is pilot-testing services on the existing cable-television infrastructure in hospitals, so that the technology will be ready to go wide-area as soon as broadband becomes inexpensive and available to the home.

Smart companies in a wide range of industries are racing to position themselves to provide multimedia, interactive, specialized information services. Already hot, this market may explode once consumers have their last-mile broadband connections and multifunctional consumer access devices, executives predict.

And as WAN costs become increasingly negligible, not only information services but application processing will become increasingly centralized - and outsourced.

"The information processing will be done by a service, rather like the old-style service bureaus," Anderson says. "Companies won't need to own and maintain computing and storage devices." And firms will be able to offload the costs of rolling out and maintaining enterprise applications.

Textron outsourced parts of its network to AT&T Solutions two years ago, and Textron's chief information officer, Bill Gauld, says outsourcing of applications is just the next logical step: "We no longer own our telecom assets. There's nothing on our books, so we are not limited or constrained in what we use. We just look at cost of technology and whether it addresses a business benefit - we don't have to put five years' depreciation of legacy routers into the equation."

He adds, "With bandwidth plentiful and services delivered via a common user interface, you can make decisions about where to put applications without worrying about technical or network limitations." And Textron doesn't have its assets tied up in network gear.

Users will benefit from thin clients and centralized services by finally having access to application and information services from anywhere in the company - or ultimately, the world. "Anything I keep on my desktop has geographic immobility," Anderson says. "I'd much rather be in a situation where I can [plug in] and pick up information or schedule appointments or send a file from wherever I am."

And IT will finally get that humongous budget item, user system maintenance, under control. "If something screws up, you just push the reset button and your software is automatically reinstalled from a central place," Anderson says.