What's on the technology horizon? Six perspectives--part 1. (Business of Technology).

Six leading industry experts weigh in on what's on the horizon for technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) companies. Half the panelists share their thoughts on the next wave of killer apps in this issue's Part 1, and the other half shed light on business issues that will confront TMT companies in the coming months in Part 2, which will run in an upcoming issue of Computer Technology Review. The panelists sit on the Advisory Board for Deloitte & Touche's TMT Trends publication.

Q: What technologies do you see evolving into a killer app in the near future?

Mike Durance, Toshiba Telecommunication Systems Division

In the area of voice-data convergence, killer apps will spring from the needs of mobile users. Internet Protocol (IP) is really a key technology enabler that supports the convergence of voice and data onto the same transport. In the early days of multimedia and convergence, there was a lot of talk in the industry about the four A's: Any media, Anytime, Anywhere, Any device. With the advent of IP, I think we can coin the fifth "A"--Any application. The IP infrastructure enables us to deliver multimedia-rich applications to the end user. That amounts to achieving the Holy Grail in the communications world.

In this new converged environment, it's hard to predict a killer app. The world is more dynamic and trends emerge and fall off the radar more quickly. By definition, a killer app is an application that has broad enough appeal that it becomes pervasive throughout the industry. One key trend that is counter to that notion is the trend toward personalization. More people want to customize their communication solution to their business or personal needs. Successful communication providers will heed that trend.

To that end, I envision highly flexible, adaptable communications solutions that allow users to blend call handling and applications to fit their enterprise needs. One example is "voice mail boomerang." This integration of voice mail and switching in a PBX system allows you to make a call in the middle of listening to voice mail messages, then go right back to the message you left off with. The capability involves the interaction of voice mail and call handling--however it could be any application that business customers will expect to work together with the Key System or PBX, as part of a seamless communication solution.

In the voice mail boomerang scenario, the switch and the voice mail capability are on separate cards or platforms, and are likely written on different operating systems. Until recently, manufacturers hadn't developed the kind of flexible architecture that could integrate such applications. Data and voice worlds have typically operated in two separate technological worlds. This puts a spotlight on one of the challenges facing telecommunications vendors: Data players underestimate the applications behind voice while the data world considers voice just another packet sent over the IP network. When you consider the complex communication needs at the typical enterprise, it amounts to more than adding data to voice or vice versa. The industry needs to shed its arbitrary partitioning of functions and applications before it can decisively identify what the enterprise wants from multimedia applications. Only then will IP overtake TDM, the industry's tried and true platform.

Whether IP finds a place in a particular application ultimately depends on the stability of the operating system, the underlying platform technology, and its ability to support the voice world's scenarios. These issues need time to be worked out. The industry's secondary challenge is to allow IP to go through the same maturity curve that has brought voice and TDM technologies to where they are today.

The increasingly mobile workforce has driven the development of voice-data applications. If there is a killer device for these applications, it is the handheld unit. We usually think of communication as a two-way conversation with data and video as add-ons. But if you think in terms of transactions that you can perform with a handheld, such as buying stock, order picking, or closing a deal, you can see how the proliferation of handhelds will lead to the adoption of multimedia applications in which voice and data play key roles.

Ultimately, I believe that simplicity should drive technological development. People don't buy products that they don't understand or that require them to change their behavior. We'll find that when it comes to voice-data convergence, the applications that reach "killer" status will be those that are easy for the user to understand, purchase and use--no matter how complex and personalized the applications may be.

Esther Dyson, EDventure Holdings

When global computing is pervasive and everything is wired, there is no longer a single killer app. There's a killer platform, and that's what it is. Killer applications will be tools that enable.

Today we have systems ranging from wireless handhelds to electronic tracking systems, but they aren't linked to our world. When people talk about wanting better search engines or better tracking capability, what they really want is more knowledge. And usually, for individuals, that means wanting to know where people are and how to reach them. In business, they want to keep track of things they are responsible for-anything from inventories to customer behavior to tracking the competition.

Before we can deliver that kind of intelligence, we have to develop applications that deliver better real-time, physical data. This will simplify any number of daily functions at home, at work and when we travel. For example, airlines will be less likely to lose your luggage because radio frequency identification (RFID) tags will be affixed to your bags. If your bags do get lost, they will be easier to find with the RFID tag.

Having your possessions--and you--so easy to trace will make random theft more difficult. But this same capability raises privacy concerns. For instance, clothing may also have RFID tags. When you walk into a store, the store could recognize a clothing item that you had previously bought there. But what's potentially more troubling is that as more of what we do becomes electronic, it will be technically possible to know where someone is and what they're doing. That's fine if you're simply watching your young kids. It's not so good if the government is watching you. We'll need both the technological and legal means to place controls on this powerful capability.

Having data on demand means that, fundamentally, everything is going to be knowable. The challenge that has never faced humans before on such a grand scale will be for each of us to determine what we want to know and what we do not want to know. And, what do we want other people to know about us?

What will make possible the new world of ubiquitous real-time data? Metadata will be one of the most important underpinnings of this knowledge. By labeling electronic information, metadata helps computers structure information and handle it more intelligently and flexibly--and present it better to humans. When you log-on to a website through a specific interface, it's as though you've turned on the lights to see what's there. Just as websites will disclose information about themselves, so will the physical world. A car will be able to identify its owner, where it is located and where it has its oil changed. In effect, we'll be able to query the whole world.

On the people side, individuals will have the ability to manage their contacts, from and to. That is, you can maintain a list of the people you communicate with, and define them in various categories. Then you can define how available you want each category to be. If you're in a meeting, you can set specific responses for each category: Ask them to call back in 10 minutes, forward them to someone else, or promise to call them back later. Even as our ability to communicate increases, we'll need--and get--better tools to handle our increasingly complex lives.

Steve Shepard, Shepard Communications Group

People aren't looking for the next great killer app as much as they're looking for a killer way to access today's applications. This is particularly true in the area of telecommunications. On both the residential and business side, users want better access to voice, email, instant messaging and rudimentary Internet access via phones and PDAs for information like airline flight schedules and city maps. They also want better access for games played on PDAs and cell phones. The market for standalone and interactive games is surprisingly strong. In five years, the game market is expected to reach $8 billion.

Our ability to access these applications, whether from a distant continent or the local coffee house, depends on the availability of true universal broadband, including DSL, cable modems and wireless technologies. Today, only about 25 percent of North Americans subscribe to broadband. In Asia and Europe, 40 percent subscribe.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) holds the cards to providing broader and more reliable access. And it wouldn't require a lot of technological magic to make it happen. The incumbent telcos and service providers need an incentive to make the investment and take on the risk of installing what it takes to deliver universal broadband. The FCC can pave the way for that incentive by changing the industry's regulatory model. Today there are few incentives for providers to take risks due to the line-sharing rules. Under the current FCC regulations, competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) such as Allegiance Telecom and the local divisions of AT&T and MCI, compete with the incumbent carriers by leasing the infrastructure from the incumbent carriers (which include companies like SBC, Verizon and BellSouth), at wholesale prices that are so low that the incumbents claim to lose an average of $9 per line on each one leased. The CLECs then price their services lower than the incumbents' prices and compete with them over the same physical network.

This model of competing with the incumbent companies using those companies' resources is clearly not working. Prices are high and service quality is low. Fortunately, the FCC is expected to make additional changes to the rules this year, and while major change is not anticipated, the changes will--to one degree or another--require that those who want to compete, do so over their own facilities or using alternative technologies, cable or broadband wireless. When that happens, the competitive pressure on all the providers will force them to invest in the upgrades necessary to deliver broadband on the scale we need. The user experience will improve and costs will plummet. Both the incumbent phone companies and the CLECs are ready to provide this level of "killer access." They've been watching the cost of cell and local phone service drop while the market gets increasingly competitive. They're anxious to bolster their revenue streams.

Universal broadband access would benefit our entire economy. According to a variety of industry analysis firms, including Yankee Group and Forrester Research, between $400-$600 billion per year, and 3 billion work hours per year, would be injected into the economy during the next decade if universal broadband were to become a reality. This infusion would come from the build out of DSL, wireless and cable modem infrastructures and a revived market for hardware and software needed to take advantage of the improved access.

While the broadband access issues are being worked out, users will expect more functionality from their mobile communications systems. Security applications are high on the list for corporate users-- especially security for virtual private networks (VPNs). VPNs allow people to send secure information over public networks. They are becoming increasingly important for two reasons: First, as our workforce becomes more mobile, companies realize that it's more cost effective to invest in the networks and equipment to serve their mobile workers than it is to outfit and maintain offices for workers who are rarely there. Second, companies realize that putting employees face-to-face with customers goes a long way to enhance customer relations, so they fully support the mobile worker.

As a society, we've embraced the many killer applications that have made this mobile work style possible. Now it's time for our telecommunications regulations to open the door to the "killer access" we need to take full advantage of those applications, and the new technologies and revived economy that are sure to follow.

The Advisory Board includes: Mike Durance, vice president and general manager, Toshiba Telecommunication Systems Division (Irvine, Calif.); Esther Dyson, chairman, EDventure Holdings (New York N.Y); and Steven Shepard, president, Shepard Communications Group (Williston, Vermont)

www.toshiba.com

www.edventure.com

www.shepardcomm.com