Emerging Technologies:

IACT 302

Corporate Network Planning

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Driving Business Strategy

• Standards are the foundation of communication and of all networks

• Building on the existing foundation of powerful standards and connectivity, three sets of emerging technologies are driving the next stage of the networks

– XML and web services

– peer-to-peer

– network interfaces.

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Driving Business Strategy

• In the connected economy, standards and network strategy are at the heart of all business.

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Digital Standards

• The first digital augmentation of human capabilities dates back more than five millennia

• The invention of cuneiform allowed the Sumerians to record information using a set of defined characters that could be copied exactly any number of times

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Digital Standards

• To create the world's first written language, the Sumerians had to agree on what each cuneiform mark meant

• They had to establish standards

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Digital Standards

• The result of establishing a standard for digital storage and communication transformed Sumerian society

• It enabled laws to be written down and standardized for the first time, rather than relying on memory or a judge's foibles.

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Foundation for all Communication

• Only when a group of people agree that certain sounds or inscriptions denote specific concepts can they communicate

• Standard of language allows people to understand each other

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Foundation for all Communication

• Technology standards allow devices or systems to connect and for information to flow between them

• As such, all networks exist only by virtue of standards.

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Foundation for all Communication

• The Internet is not a communications infrastructure– It is a set of standards that allows any computer to be

connected and to exchange information

– Only after a set of standards is universally agreed can anyone tap into the "cloud" of the Internet at any point and access or transfer information to anyone else

– The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) proposed standards, and only because everyone has accepted these has a truly global network been born

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Foundation for all Communication

• In economic and strategic terms, a network is formed wherever a common standard allows connection and communication, whether or not that capability is actually used

– Users of Apple Macintosh computers form a network, irrespective of whether they actually communicate directly with each other

– Their systems are based on the same standards, which gives them common interests

– Everyone benefits from a larger network

– The more Mac users there are, the easier it is to share information, the more high-quality software will be written, the lower the costs of hardware and software, and the more valuable Mac users' skills will be

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Foundation for all Communication

• These are examples of network effects, the benefits that members gain through a larger network

– The most important single characteristic of networks is positive feedback

– In any true network, the greater the number of participants the more the benefits to those who are connected

– In addition, this draws in providers of associated services, further increasing the benefits and attracting yet more users

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Foundation for all Communication

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Driving Forces

• Primary forces that have created today's networked world– Powerful computing for individuals

– Rapidly increasing bandwidth

– Mobile communications • Next wave of critical technologies

– Enable far greater connection and integration

– Connect and integrate different systems more easily

– Smaller pools of connectivity can be combined to rapidly form far larger networks

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Driving Forces

• Today there are still many constraints on

– The free flow of information

– The ability for business processes to be linked and integrated

• After systems can be integrated far more easily, business has the potential to shift to become part of a single, truly global network

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XML and Web Services • XML is a standard for formatting and describing

information

– If information is sent in an XML format, this can allow any two computers to understand and use it in the same way

• Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the language used to write Web pages

– It presents information so that people can understand it when they see it

• XML performs the same function for machines

– Each piece of information in a transmission between computers is given a tag that describes it.

• <LENGTH_IN_METERS>2.3</LENGTH_IN_METERS>

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XML and Web Services

• If the computer of one of the company's business partners has been provided with the same list of descriptions, then it will always know how to deal with information when it arrives as part of any communication

– You can use it to transmit any type of information you like

– It's critical for industries to collaborate to produce common descriptions of information

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XML and Web Services

• XML is a standardized way to attach descriptions to information

– If every organization implements it differently, it will be useless for exchanging information

– The value comes when all participants in an industry agree on specifically what information they want to communicate, and in what format

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XML and Web Services

• XML-based standards provide a foundation for general communication issues

– How firms exchange messages and documents and integrate them into their respective business processes

• Emerging dominant standard for these general business applications is e-business XML (ebXML)

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Web Services

• Basis for Microsoft's .NET advertising

– companies can now be connected directly with their customers, partners, and employees

– promise of the emerging technologies called web services which are based on XML

• Web services are essentially a set of standards that allow computer applications to interconnect

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Web Services

• Three key implications of web services:

– Easier integration inside and outside the organization

– Modular organizations

– New business models and structures

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Peer-to-Peer • In 2000 Napster's users created the fastest-

growing network in history– in less than one year more than 70 million registered

participants

– The file sharing system was closed down in 2001 on legal issues

– changed the way people think about the Internet and connectivity

• The shift since has been towards distributed systems– resources are spread through the networks rather than

centralized

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Peer-to-Peer

• There are five key domains in which peer-to-peer technologies are being applied

• Each has the potential to have a major impact on how business is done

– Distributed content

– Distributed computation

– Collaboration

– Distributed processes

– Markets

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Distributed content• Napster

– Everyone who was connected effectively shared parts of his or her hard disks

– Instead of being limited to your own storage, you can now have many millions of people's hard disks appear to be part of your own system

• Deloitte & Touche UK – Easy access to a wide range of information held in

different computers and locations both inside and outside the firm

– Improve productivity of auditing staff who need to access disparate documents in the course of their work

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Distributed computation• The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)

initiative– Immense amount of data from the world's largest radio

telescope as it scans the sky • submits it to intensive analysis in order to detect possible signs

of intelligent life

– Most people use only a fraction of their PC's processing power, and then for only a small part of the day

• SETI@home initiative taps that unused processing power

– Less than 18 months after the system's launch• Two million PCs in 226 countries were at work

• Global supercomputer from donated computing power

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Distributed computation

• The same principle is now being applied to a range of scientific endeavours

– Cancer research

– Genetic design

• Competing for people's spare computing power

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Distributed computation

• Companies are also using similar approaches

– First Union Bank has implemented distributed processing systems for its financial risk management, a notoriously computing-intensive task

– "As an added benefit, leveraging the idle capacity of our existing network resources lets us evaluate new strategies and model innovations we didn't have the resources for previously, giving us a competitive edge,"

• Concurrent development of grid computing

– Grids focus on hardware platforms

– P2P focus on applications

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Collaboration

• Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes, left the company for some thinking space after it was bought by IBM

– Instant messaging to collaborate with friends on homework

– Playing with online friends the multiuser blast-and-destroy game Quake

– Quake provided competing teams with an extremely effective collaborative space

– Stark contrast to the very simple tools, such as email, that office workers have to work together

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Collaboration

• Launched Groove Networks

– Sells peer-to-peer collaboration software

– Groove allows any group of people to

• Share and annotate files

• Draw on the same whiteboard

• Chat

• Have voice conversations

• Browse together

• Create a space that enables them to work effectively together

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Collaboration

• Companies that have already implemented Groove include

– pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, which

• Enable its researchers to work closely with outside organizations, such as universities and clinical research firms

– Raytheon

• Develop collaboration between teams at companies it has acquired

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Distributed processes

• Business processes are increasingly distributed across organizations, crossing boundaries and involving disparate teams,

• Peer-to-peer systems can directly connect any group of individuals involved in a process, irrespective of whether they're in the same organization or location, or the systems they use

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Distributed processes

• United Technologies

– A conglomerate that includes Pratt & Whitney and Otis Elevator

– Using P2P to allow engineers to share information about the products they are developing directly from PC to PC

– Expects use of the system to substantially accelerate the design process

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Markets

• A marketplace matches buyers and sellers

• For large transactions, a peer-to-peer system can be ideal

• Rather than funneling all interaction through a single exchange, it can put buyers and sellers in touch with each other to negotiate terms directly.

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Markets• Liquidnet

– institutional share trading system launched in April 2001

– Within six months had racked up transactions of more than 300 million shares

– Institutional investors are anonymously linked to the firms that are on the other side of the trades they want to execute, allowing them to negotiate prices directly

– Vast majority of trades are executed at prices better than could be achieved on an exchange

– The investors on both sides of the trade are happy, and neither the stock exchanges nor the stockbrokers see any part of the business

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Network Interfaces

• Networks are ultimately about people connecting with other people

– The easy bit is connecting the technology that sits in the middle

– The difficult part is allowing people to interface more effectively with the technology

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Network Interfaces

• Can you touch-type?

– If so, you're in a small minority

– The productivity of two-thirds of the U.S. workforce depends on how well they can use a keyboard to write and enter information

– Only 20 percent of those people can touch-type

• Next generation

– Voice recognition

– Voice synthesis

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Networks Bringing People Together• MIT Media Labs – cricket

– Delegates given a cricket

• Attached to lapel

• Programmed with their profile and interests

• When someone who has similar interests walks within range, the crickets "chirp," suggesting the two people should speak

– The technology alerts you to who you are likely to want to speak to

• Natural and unforced

• Part of the natural flow of people in a large group

– Japan

• "proximity dating"

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Networks Bringing People Together• Video conferencing

– Teleportec allow people to appear anywhere in the world as a three-dimensional image, see the room, and hold eye contact with their counterparts

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Standards and Network Strategy -Macromedia Flash• Macromedia makes its money by selling the

software for developers to create Flash files

• Web site designers would only use Flash if

– Their target audience had installed the software

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Standards and Network Strategy -Macromedia Flash• Web surfers would only download Flash Player if

there were interesting Web sites using Flash Developers would only develop if people could

see it Macromedia decided to give away the player then opened the specification for SWF files this allowed competitors to create authoring

software to compete with macromedias revenue raising

portion• Why?????

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Standards and Network Strategy -Macromedia Flash• If Flash became the de facto internet

standard for multimedia

– Then Macromedia would end up with a share of a bigger market hopefully meaning more overall sales

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Standards and Network Strategy

• the basis of any network is interoperability• Only if systems can share information and work

together do they form a network• Europe

– Every mobile phone uses GSM

– you can go to any country and make calls and send and receive text messages as if you were at home

• United States– multiple mobile communications standards

– several distinct networks of users that can't always link directly

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Standards and Network Strategy• Standards can be

controlled by – Single companies

– Alliances

– Standards bodies • Can be either

– A competitive situation

– Have moved toward or achieved broad market acceptance

• There are powerful trends toward both open and accepted standards

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Developing Network Strategies

• Action Steps

– Decide where you want open standards and where you want to own the standard.

– Participate strategically in alliances and standards bodies.

– Align your strategies with the evolving standards landscape.

– Adopt new pricing and business models.

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Developing Network Strategies

• Action Steps

– Decide where you want open standards and where you want to own the standard

– Participate strategically in alliances and standards bodies

– Align your strategies with the evolving standards landscape

– Adopt new pricing and business models

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open VS closed standards• Instant messaging

– AOL – Time Warner• Closed Standard

• No comms to other networks

• Blocking innovation and consumer benefits

– Microsoft Messenger • Built into OS

– Yahoo Messenger • integrated into some of the firm's other services

– ICQ• Users' demand for the benefits of standards are too strong

to resist indefinitely

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open VS closed standards

• In essence, you will want open standards in every field except where you think you can gain a competitive advantage and dominate the market

• Challenge

– When you have a competitive advantage

– Yet open standards will help to grow the industry and the market

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Alliances and Standards Bodies

• 1994 Ericsson started developing a communications protocol to link mobile phones with their accessories– protocol would be of limited use unless it was adopted by

manufacturers of all kinds of devices

– 1997 it started to talk to other firms about joining with them to create a standard

• The Bluetooth Special Interest Group – Ericsson

– IBM

– Intel

– Nokia

– Toshiba

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Alliances and Standards Bodies

• Mission to develop and promote

– Wireless standard to link devices

– Up to 10 meters

– Up to 1 megabits per second

• Now has over 2000 members