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The future of business software is in the past
Thursday, June 13 2002
by Ralph Averbuch


Last month there were two things that caught my attention and both are
inextricably linked to the future of software as we know it.

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.