The next big thing

Trade

IT visionaries, computing prognosticators and other assorted info-shaman are scrabbling around at the moment for The Next Big Thing (TNBT). While there are undoubtedly ‘Big Things’ afoot, the proximity of anything really big is illusory in the present economic climate.

The study of history is useful if only to stave off relentless boredom of living through the same crises more than once. There is a thick catalogue of TNBTs that didn’t quite make it, lying withered on the floor like needles from last year’s Christmas tree that somehow haven’t been swept up yet. CRM was supposed to be TNBT a while ago. On current evidence, it may be the The One After The One After TNBT.

A conversation with my local Mercedes dealer is on point. After taking the car in for a routine service a week ago, parts not on hand were needed to repair the car under warranty. After a decent interval with no contact from the garage, I rang to find out when the work could be done so that the wheels wouldn’t fall off. I was asked for the car’s registration number and I just replied: ‘No, sorry, I didn’t have it to hand.’

No perks with Mercs
The service department could not help me without my car’s registration number. This didn’t shock me, as this is the I same dealership that misspells my name on mailings and that persisted for a year in sending my post to the wrong address in a neighbouring town. Mercedes in these parts has invested deeply in computing including parts inventory and dispatch and, ahem, customer marketing. Especially since customer service in the hurly burly world of Euro auto franchises is a critical business edge. Alas, CRM has yet to trickle down to the customer interface at establishments marked by the manufacturer as deserving three pointed stars.

How about interfacing the switchboard so that the caller ID pulls up the customer screen by name (NOT reg number)? How about linking the parts order system to an alert diary that gives a list of contact numbers to the service manager when things get old? How about treating a customer with a warranty claim as an opportunity to prove the superiority of Mercedes as a brand and that dealer as his advocate in assuring the best motor experience? How about e-mail for Mercedes customers? When I go shopping for my next set of wheels, I will be vetting the back office performance as much as the road experience.

Another big thing
Streaming media was booked to be TNBT, but where has that gone? It is still queued up behind the broadband revolution, a withered TNBT if ever there was one. Both of those pretenders for the Big Thing throne have failed to win the title because of their lack of a workable revenue model. After ten years of training Web users that content is free and that bandwidth is cheap, streaming media and broadband are both reaping the consequences.

SAP and its fellow business process integration travellers were marked for TNBT status, but where are they now? Companies that were not dissuaded by the many months of planning, implementation and business process carnage have reached the Promised Land. However, in many cases the lesson learned was that monolithic projects with long implementation times are not likely to be responsive enough in volatile business environments nor are they likely to deliver best of breed service.

P2P, as evidenced by the vertical assent of Napster and the continuation of its fellow travellers onwards, indicated that peer computing could be TNBT. In reaction, record companies stuck their heads in the sand and whistled loudly in the dark. They came up with anti-rip technology like Macrovision’s SafeAudio and to block the route to TNBT. Midbar’s Cactus Data Shield on the fragrant Natalie Imbroglia’s latest CD has been causing the diva’s customers to stay away in droves. Replacement CD have been offered. The customers have spoken: carrots please, and you know where you can put the stick.

TNBT spotting
Comdex used to be a good place to spot TNBT, but judging by the most recent show which has just closed in Las Vegas, Comdex itself is not going to be a Big Thing for much longer. Gates’ keynote wasn’t the customary standing-room only performance. On a chilling note, 400 of the 2,300 companies that exhibited at last year’s Comdex are now out of business.

The current predictable aversion to air travel and the introduction of asinine security measures (eg no visitors to Comdex were not allowed bring their notebook computers with them) weren’t solely to blame, but fear of flying may have contributed to Comdex attendance being half of what it was last year. I surmise that the lack of evidence of TNBT on the horizon was the main reason for low attendance numbers. Who would brave terrorist interdiction to see a faster Pentium, new bug infested operating software or a late-comer game machine named after the contents of Scully and Mulder’s four-drawer filing cabinet? The gadgets and gizmos on display this year were the best ever: a lot of fun, some good value but not worth leaving home and to go to a place full of slot machines.

About 400 new products were launched at this year’s Comdex, with some of these being chosen as award winners in twelve different show categories. Mountain Solutions’ ABSplus product range received a ‘Best of Show’ award for ‘Best User Storage’ at Comdex last week. 

I have played around with the gem that is the Automatic Backup Solution (ABS) for a month or so and it is damn near mandatory for any notebook PC user, in my opinion. It is a mini hard disk with an attached PCMCIA interface card. It is free of power cables, bulk, weight and fiddly controls. The smaller devices, which offer only 6Gb, are a bit dear, but the big ones offer up to 48Gb and re something of a bargain.

After a little doe-see-doe with an installation CD, backing up your notebook in its entirety on to the ABS is effortless and quick – as you would want in any backup process or product. You can also use the ABS as a very high capacity and performance floppy disk. With notebook 2001 sales (even in this depressed market) set to hit 25 million units, management-information system demands for backup of those bulging all-too-nickable data stores is reaching a crescendo. Mountain Solutions has made brilliant use of boring technology and can save considerable grief and expense. But is it TNBT? Nah, no way!

After the glitzy flop of Comdex, could there be much hope that TNBT would come out of a meeting room in a Silicon Valley hotel filled with black belt nerds? The IEEE has created one more entry for the 802.11 alphabet soup, 802.11g. But ‘g’ isn’t going to be TNBT. 

Higher data rates are always welcomed, but with ‘b’ prices going ever lower and ‘a’ showing few signs of life, you’d have to say that, that in the absence of any Big Thing application, that the cost of the new 802.11g’s 54 Mbit/s isn’t likely to be ‘Next’ or even ‘Big’. You can run full-screen full-motion video over 802.11b’s 11 Mbit/s, so the pressure to move to ‘g’ is not apparent. It’ll be nice enough for routers and access points, but that a Big Thing does not make.

No big thing
Despite all the huffing and puffing (and investing), TNBT is not likely to be GPRS, EDGE or even the MMS mobile phone services. In a rapidly deflating mobile market, Nokia launched three new handsets post-Comdex (see how important Comdex has become?) including a long-predicted, multimedia, messaging services-enabled model.

The ever-optimistic Finns (except during the winter suicide season) say that new 7650 MMS phone is ‘TNBT in the mobile messaging evolution’. According to MD Jorma Ollila ‘We are in a situation where we are facing a paradigm shift in mobile communications – from “listen to what I say” to “see what I mean”.’ Haven’t you heard this before?

The 7650 has all the bells and whistles: a built-in digital camera, a cute colour screen, Java support, Bluetooth connectivity, Symbian OS, GPRS, HSCSD and a WAP 1.2.1 browser. Sadly, lots of TLAs don’t add up to TNBT. 

Big bureaucracy
If there is anything that can take the wind out of a potential TNBT’s sails, aside from chronically unfulfilled promises, it would have to be something bigger, say, the machinations of a global monopoly or truly monumental government interference.

The EU seems bent on delivering a retro-rocket to technical monopolies, going by recent pronouncements about cookies and personal privacy. The debate about the erosion of privacy online is also being accompanied by a debate about the technical vulnerability of the cookies themselves. I no longer believe that every stumbling block in the road to ecommerce is a bad thing. Giving users choice about how cookies are used and a spirited debate on their security and privacy implications are both to be welcomed. But I fear there is more technical ignorance than enlightenment guiding the EU’s hand in Internet matters at present.

TNBT will assuredly arrive one day, but are lots of reasons why the identity of next TNBT is still well concealed: the economic downturn, the aftershocks of September11th, cack-handed governmental interference and oppressive technical monopolies are all combining to create thicker underbrush around TNBT’s hiding place.

For businesses that use computers and looking for a way to steal the lead on encroaching competition, TNBT news is that there is no next big thing worth waiting for. Check out Raindance at www.raindance.com to make telephone conferences almost as good as face-to-face palavers at a fraction of the cost. Look into the Human Firewall Council at www.humanfirewall.org for IT security policies that can provide better value than a bundle of expensive hardware or software ever can. Put the knowledge inside your organisation to use, even within multi-national contexts with software like Convera (www.convera.com). There is a long list of incremental things that you can do while waiting for TNBT to extract value from what you already have, without prejudicing your ability to hitch a ride on the next rocket-propelled bandwagon.

The best advice I can give is: ‘Get on with it. Raise revenues, cut expenses, invest where there are good returns. Normal service will resume next summer and TNBT will be along shortly thereafter.’

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