by Jason Tan
Malaysia: Business Computing
December 11, 2003

During a trip to Malaysia in November 2003, the Multimedia Development Corporation, the KDU Management Development Center and IBM sponsored a speech about “The Future Of The Internet”. The following article followed after a Q&A with reporters.
“NOT only will this next-generation Internet be orders of magnitude faster, but it also will be always on, everywhere, natural, intelligent, easy and trusted,” says John Patrick, president of Attitude LLC.
“Soon, one billion people will be using the Internet, empowering themselves to get what they want, when they want it, from wherever they are. Expectations for on-demand e-business are expanding by the day.”

Patrick was speaking at a talk held by IBM, KDU Management Development Centre Sdn Bhd and Multimedia Development Corporation.

On-demand e-businesses enable “click here” to initiate a service call chat session or video window with an actual person, and they certainly do not have the words “fax this form” Patrick says, pointing out the common mistakes companies make online.

“They don’t pretend to be global businesses and then ask you to call a toll-free number. On-demand e-businesses offer a people-oriented and user-friendly integrated experience for all parties involved, including employees on the intranet, suppliers, customers, partners, analysts and prospective constituents.”

According to Patrick, on-demand e-businesses will not have achieved 24×7 by making everything redundant, but rather will have used autonomic computing capabilities to achieve the effect of redundancy. This effect of redundancy will come from virtualisation of resources, and intelligent and automatic sharing of those resources, he explains.

“Very few on-demand e-businesses exist at this stage, but the early adopters are beginning to emerge,” Patrick observes.

GOING FOR WI-FI

With Wi-Fi chips in handheld devices and the rapid adoption of voice over Internet protocol based on Session Initiation Protocol, the Internet becomes everywhere and voice conversation becomes just one of the many things you can do while connected, Patrick says.

And with more people always on and having adequate bandwidth, information-oriented e-businesses will lead the charge for the re-emergence of application service providers, he adds.

AUTHENTICATION MATTERS

“Security will no longer be the biggest issue, but authentication will,” Patrick stresses, adding that the need is urgent as people have an unmanageable number of identities and passwords. In view of this, digital
certificates will let people, computers, handhelds and applications
interact securely in a distributed Web of trust, he says.

“As the Internet evolves, it will become so pervasive, reliable and transparent that we will take it for granted. It will be part of our lives and, more importantly, begin to simplify our lives,” Patrick says.