DMR | Detecon Management Report
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Architecting Novel Information Services and Markets
A Perspective
In past decades, the information revolution has been driven by successive technology innovation waves: semiconductors and microprocessors in the 70s, desktop and personal computing in the 80s, networking and wireless in the 90s. These have led to the emergence of the Internet and the Web as the ubiquitous communication and computing infrastructure. Currently, a new innovation wave of information services is rising, in parallel to advances in technology. It is gradually sweeping over traditional business models of telecommunications, enterprise computing, etc.
Next-generation information service engineering, management and market innovations may actually be the drivers of future technology developments. They could provide the overarching context of the information revolution in this decade and beyond. The shift from raw technology ‘push’ to expanded service ‘pull’ can be a threat to those who complacently ignore it. But I strongly believe that it also opens up exciting opportunities for the visionary technology and market innovator. I briefly develop this perspective below, without aiming to cover its full scope.
Let us first look at some evolving technology changes and the challenges ahead. Current thrusts include convergence of wireless and wireline networking infrastructures, consolidation of computing and storage into massive data centers, multimedia content distribution over packet-switched networks, robust and secure computing on-demand, etc. For example, after over a decade of the separate (yet parallel) development of wireless and wireline networks, these infrastructures are now gradually converging into a ubiquitous access platform, realizing economies of scope. The deep-horizon vision is to have the infrastructure operating efficiently in the background of daily life, while users are seamlessly exposed to and interact with highly personalized, diverse information services.
There are several challenges, however, to be overcome in order to realize this vision. Academic and industrial laboratories are actively working on these. They include, for example, creating smart mobile devices that can autonomously sense their operational environment and user context (office/home, car/train, work/leisure, etc.) Such devices should cooperate with background infrastructure to assemble the best available resources (access points, radio spectrum, content caches, session paths, servers, etc.) to achieve their communication and computing tasks. They should be able to seamlessly switch across various access platforms, for example, moving a wireless call from a cellular tower to an Internet voice-over-IP session, say, as their user walks into a building. These smart devices would be portals to highly personalized info-services. They should be non-invasive to daily life, being light and easy to carry around and requiring infrequent battery recharge even under heavy usage. Despite the clear vision, designing such user devices and supporting infrastructure poses serious challenges at several levels, ranging from scalable protocols to efficient human-computer interfaces.
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Next-generation information service engineering, management and market innovations may actually be the drivers of future technology developments. They could provide the overarching context of the information revolution in this decade and beyond. The shift from raw technology ‘push’ to expanded service ‘pull’ can be a threat to those who complacently ignore it. But I strongly believe that it also opens up exciting opportunities for the visionary technology and market innovator. I briefly develop this perspective below, without aiming to cover its full scope.
Let us first look at some evolving technology changes and the challenges ahead. Current thrusts include convergence of wireless and wireline networking infrastructures, consolidation of computing and storage into massive data centers, multimedia content distribution over packet-switched networks, robust and secure computing on-demand, etc. For example, after over a decade of the separate (yet parallel) development of wireless and wireline networks, these infrastructures are now gradually converging into a ubiquitous access platform, realizing economies of scope. The deep-horizon vision is to have the infrastructure operating efficiently in the background of daily life, while users are seamlessly exposed to and interact with highly personalized, diverse information services.
There are several challenges, however, to be overcome in order to realize this vision. Academic and industrial laboratories are actively working on these. They include, for example, creating smart mobile devices that can autonomously sense their operational environment and user context (office/home, car/train, work/leisure, etc.) Such devices should cooperate with background infrastructure to assemble the best available resources (access points, radio spectrum, content caches, session paths, servers, etc.) to achieve their communication and computing tasks. They should be able to seamlessly switch across various access platforms, for example, moving a wireless call from a cellular tower to an Internet voice-over-IP session, say, as their user walks into a building. These smart devices would be portals to highly personalized info-services. They should be non-invasive to daily life, being light and easy to carry around and requiring infrequent battery recharge even under heavy usage. Despite the clear vision, designing such user devices and supporting infrastructure poses serious challenges at several levels, ranging from scalable protocols to efficient human-computer interfaces.
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