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The first was a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers talking about how business software is evolving. To cut a rather long story short, over the next few years they see the Web becoming the method by which we will use applications in business. Essentially the Internet will be the operating system through which we will access company intranets, extranets, and any other companies we are doing, or trying to do, business with.
It all sounds a little deja vu; I seem to recall that this was the sort of thing being touted a few years ago, when software behemoths like Microsoft and Oracle were buying into the concept of us all logging into central servers with so-called 'dumb' terminals, and paying for the use of remote software.
Well, that's what the PwC report is now touting! Business is going to go a similar route, with people connecting from any location into a business network, using little modular applications to talk to the central IT nervous systems of their business. The difference is, even the dumbest of devices today has a wealth of local processing power so it looks like things might evolve a little differently.
And this is where the second event of May kicks in. At E3 in Los Angeles the gaming world was, once again, singing the story of networked collaborative or competitive multiplayer games. Of course this area is hardly new. I played my first networked game of Doom in late 1995 and it was without doubt a revelation in computer entertainment (and time wasting in the view of my then employer).
Yet, what it unfailingly demonstrates is the fact that looking at what's already happening in the consumer space is a guide to what we might begin to see happening at the corporate level.
Take something like real-time always-on messaging. This was pioneered in Web-based applications from the likes of ICQ, Y! Messenger and AOL Messenger. In no time at all, as long as you could get a connection, you could log in over a WAP phone or a PDA, working collaboratively, swapping files and generally being in touch with all your buddies.
So this isn't new technology; it's a good few years old. And now a report is telling us that this is the way corporate level business computing solutions are going to go. Oh really. Well that's a shocker.
Anyone with any wit will recognise that the consumer applications that have succeeded in the Web/digital environment provide a perfect signpost into what we can expect business to be adopting. It's an unusual state of affairs, as business applications tend to lead where consumers follow, but the huge Internet bubble was a spawning ground of great consumer-oriented ideas which business is now in the process of incorporating.
The one piece of good news for small businesses is that, with a plethora of Web-based solutions already out there in the consumer space, unlike the past, when being the first company to adopt new solutions meant spending serious money and therefore being large, there are lots of low-cost options out there for SMEs.
Take intranets...the idea of an intranet is a way of having a virtual Web office that staff can access from, ideally any location, though a multitude of devices to be up-to-date with what's going on, potentially using a Web-based e-mail client to access correspondence and important working files. Well that's all possible today from the big portals. Yahoo! Provides a free service for business that does just that so long as you can put up with the banner ads.
So I suspect the report from PricewaterhouseCoopers is correct in its assertions. But what I do wonder is just how 'new' its ideas are? With so many exciting things already available as working solutions to the great unwashed public, what do reports like this really add to our understanding of businesses connected future?
I'll wager that it's most likely that one 'new' revelation is going to be business P2P and its efficiencies in delivering real-time access to mission-critical documentation between companies...
Place your bets.
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