TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: All-Round Change

Over the past few columns, we have covered two different aspects of the new world that I see emerging around us – the network computer and massputers, and the commPuting grid. To see how this new world is getting created and understand its impact on the world around us, we need to take a deeper look at multiple converging trends from different industries.

We are seeing traditional wireline telcos impacted both by the emergence of mobile phones as well as the shift of voice to IP networks. In India, the installed base of mobile phones is now greater than the land lines. Cable companies are not only offering television channels but also voice and Internet connectivity. Telecom companies for their part are starting to offer IP-TV. The music industry has to consider new forms of distribution via online music stores like iTunes and the peer-to-peer file-sharing networks which obliterate differences between what's legal and what isn't.

Internet portals are having to face up to the emergence of search as the primary driver for traffic, and increasingly for ads. Online gaming is emerging rapidly as broadband networks proliferate, especially in the East Asian countries. Software is being delivered as a service by companies like Salesforce.com. Open-source software is making waves across domains and devices. RSS and the publish-subscribe phenomenon is transforming content delivery and access, even as bloggers complement (and perhaps, threaten) traditional media.

Amongst all this, the giants of today's technology world like Intel, Microsoft, Cisco and Nokia face slowing growth and are bumping into each other as they expand into other markets. Another reality that they face is that the next big users of technology are coming from emerging markets where affordability and simplicity can be critical business drivers. Even as analysts consider technology as just another mature industry, there is still a lot of flux taking place as computing, communications and the content industries start overlapping with each other.

Starbucks offers music downloads along with coffee. Cellphones from companies like Motorola offer MP3 players and webcams, along with Internet access. Computers from the likes of Dell and HP integrated with Microsoft software are being repositioned as entertainment controllers. Broadband wireless networks like Verizon's EV-DO blur the difference between home and office, and work and leisure. Skype undermines the traditional business model of telcos by offering free Internet calling from computers.

Even as the world considers the various converging, diverging and overlapping trends, many of our mental models get thrown into confusion. What worked in the past is not as likely to work in the future. Yesterday's partner could be tomorrow's competitor. Past success and dominance does not guarantee future triumph. Not only has the pace of change accelerated, technologies from different industries are pushing against each other in search of growth and new opportunities. It promises to be the best of times – or the worst of times! How do we make sense of this new world?

Tomorrow: India's Recent Revolutions

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: India's Recent Revolutions

As we look ahead, the perspective I will take is that of emerging markets – and in many cases, specifically India. It is a market that I am most familiar with even as much of my reading comes from what's happening across many other markets.

So far, India has been a tale of missed opportunities. Even though we have seen four important revolutions in the past 15 years, there is so much more that could have been. Let us see what these four revolutions have been, and then we will look ahead to what can be.

India's first revolution started with Rajiv Gandhi and Sam Pitroda, and their telephone booths across the country. For people who had to wait years for a telephone line, there was now an opportunity to get access to telecom without ownership of the device by using a shared resource in the neighbourhood. A million or so of these public call offices (PCOs) now dot the Indian landscape. Even though their livelihood is now threatened by the emergence of the mobile phone, their role in connecting India cannot be overestimated.

India's second revolution was the bottom-up deployment of cable television infrastructure across the country. This has transformed entertainment across India in the past decade. With no government regulation, entrepreneurs sprung up all over India, set up satellite dishes, strung cables across roads and trees and into homes, and brought variety into a country long fed with a staple diet of a handful of government TV channels. Today, a hundred TV channels are available for no more than a few hundred rupees a month across most of India. More than anything, it is cable television which has created a positive, aspirational attitude across India.

The third revolution built on the first – by making mobile phones available to individuals on-demand, again for a few hundred rupees a month. Inspite of some short-sighted government policies, cellular telephony has thrived in India, and with a base of 45 million users growing at about 2 million a month, it has amplified the communications revolution within India. Family and friends are now just a few digits away.

The fourth revolution which is in its early stages is in the IT-enabled services realm. India is rapidly becoming the back-office to the world. Even though this sector employs only about a couple million people, the growth rates and positive feedback loop has now started. It is this services revolution which has to a certain extent helped engineer the retail revolution as there are now plenty of young people with money to spend.

The two revolutions which did not happen in India were in computing and the Internet. Both showed promise, but stumbled due to a variety of reasons – with lack of demonstrable utility being one of them. This is where our story begins.

Tomorrow: Independent Thinking

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Independent Thinking

India and Indian companies have an amazing opportunity ahead of them – to build the digital infrastructure of tomorrow's world. India, like China, is a large enough market – get things right here or in China, and you have some heft to drive standards globally. We can expect little help from the government. A perfect example of this is the most recent broadband policy announced after a hundred days of thought. With a deep desire to put the interests of two government telecom incumbents (BSNL and MTNL) and their employees, the government has demonstrated that it cannot be expected to make decisions in the greater interest of hundreds of millions of Indians. One can spend a lot of time and energy being critical of our decision-makers. That path is not going to get us anywhere. We need Plan B. And luckily for us, there is plenty of help at hand.

Technological innovations are going to do what the Indian government has singularly failed to enable in the past decade: make India the hotbed and testbed for cutting-edge technologies which can dramatically transform lives in India. After all, the problems we face are not small in magnitude – ensuring that 200 million Indians have access to quality education, getting millions of information workers access to technology so that they can do their work more efficiently, providing new forms of edutainment to the growing middle-class, and lifting much of rural India out of its poverty. What is needed is the potent mix of technological innovation and Indian entrepreneurship to build solutions for the middle and bottom of the pyramid here, and then take them out to others like us across hundreds of nations globally.

Once we decide that the government is not really a factor in decision-making, life becomes easy. Consider what we are already doing: voice-over-IP is already happening inspite of a government ban, wireless hotspots are starting to proliferate even as the government only now is starting to open up spectrum, and low bit-rate wireless data networks exist in hundreds of Indian cities connecting lottery terminals, ATMs and credit card authorisation terminals to centralised data centres. Indians have solved the problem of expensive software by using a mix of piracy and open-source software. Solutions like Skype and Vonage are edging into computers and Indian networks, and there is little anyone can do to control or regulate them. Technological innovations have made geography irrelevant from the viewpoint of their own diffusion.

Armed with cash, flush with recent successes, and powered by entrepreneurial zeal, Indian companies have the ability and opportunity to now build out the model of tomorrow's world. So what if the local loop is not going to be unbundled and the last mile is a challenge? Let us use wireless broadband. So what if Intel does not enable lower-cost computers? Think network computers. So what if Microsoft still insists on dollar-denominated pricing? Think open-source software. So what if collecting money is a problem? Think pre-paid.

For the first time, the future of India is in our own hands – with the government being irrelevant. We can choose to experiment with and adopt new technologies and architectures. Some ideas will fail, but a few will succeed big time. We are about to make India a laboratory for trying out new solutions to construct the platform for the New India.

Tomorrow: Five Dimensions

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Five Dimensions

There are five dimensions along which we can explore tomorrow's world and build the right models which can be the foundation for creating (or growing) future businesses: devices, networks, infrastructure, services and payments. There is a fascinating inter-play between these elements which promises to rewire (and unwire) the future. For entrepreneurs seeking action and opportunity, there is plenty available. For incumbents, this is no time to rest. For customers, it is options unlimited. We will begin with an overview of these five dimensions, and then consider each of them in greater detail in this series.

Devices are the delivery points for services. There are three primary devices in our lives: television sets, which deliver broadcast entertainment, phones which deliver voice communications, and computers which deliver interactive data-oriented services. India has about 100 million TVs, with more than half having access to cable. There are now about 45 million mobile phones and an equivalent number of landlines. There are about 12 million computers. While mobile phones are growing at 2 million a month, the computer industry needs about six months to sell an equivalent number. A large proliferation of cybercafes across India has ensured an Internet user base of about 25 million users.

The future of devices is inextricably tied to that of networks. Both the TV industry and the telecom industry has perfected the art of delivering services to zero-management devices over networks. This is what the computer industry has not done in the past two decades. The cost and complexity of the user device and the inherent challenges of delivering new services has stunted growth. In a way, the personal computer industry is an aberration in a half-century old industry which has largely thrived on centralised computing. It is time to now learn from others and go back to the roots for the computer industry if they are to tap the next 90% of the market in India. The time has come to use the air to build high-speed wireless broadband networks to create a pervasive and ubiquitous always-on envelope of connectivity.

The server-side infrastructure will be a critical component of tomorrow's world. As we will see later in the series, what is needed is a virtualisation layer which makes a large number of commodity computers appear as a single large computer. This infrastructure needs to provide the platform for computing, storage and user provisioning. This centralised grid will be the foundation to build the “commPuting” utility.

The fourth dimension is perhaps the most critical of them all – the services. Users do not care about hardware or software – what they care about is the set of aggregate services and how these services make a difference to their lives. It is the services which will determine the success of this architecture. Be it education or entertainment, auctions or gaming, the services offered will create the value for the rest of the ecosystem. At the same time, service providers have to think how they will architect their offerings in the new connected world of tomorrow.

The final dimension is that of payments. Telephone companies and cable companies have perfected the art of collecting money on a subscription basis every month. This contrasts with the computing industry which wants a large upfront investment from its users. The mobile phone companies have gone one-step better with the use of pre-paid cards to eliminate credit-related issues. Payments and a revenue sharing infrastructure between the infrastructure and service providers will be a critical component of tomorrow's world.

Tomorrow: The Road Ahead

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: The Road Ahead

As we look ahead, it is useful to keep some pointers in mind. Predicting the future is very difficult. I am not talking here about trying to predict what will happen. Instead, I am suggesting that we envision the future and actually go about building it out. There is a big difference between the two approaches. Let me explain.

Making predictions is what the likes of astrologers do. It is also what analysts in research firms do. They take today's trends and make forecasts of what is likely to happen in the next few years. They are, however, not active participants in creating that future. Their customers are.

Entrepreneurs and Innovators work on building the future. They imagine tomorrow's world. And then, they work backwards to architect events in a certain way that the endgame is the one they have thought about. Not all entrepreneurs and innovators succeed – in fact, most fail. I am not talking of naturally embracing failure. I am suggesting that if done right and if the actions are based on a solid understanding of tomorrow's world, there is a good chance that the entrepreneurs and innovators can succeed.

What is needed is not just a vision for tomorrow's world, but also a dynamic set of mental models which can self-correct the path to the future based on events as they happen. Many times, we fixate ourselves on a vision, and get blindsided by developments in other areas. At other times, we assume certain events will occur, and if they don't happen or get delayed, then our plans go in a tizzy. In the world of today which is seeing silos between industries breaking, it is very important to have a constant feedback mechanism – much like an aircraft's fly-by-wire system. The destination is known, but the objective is also to ensure a smooth ride and not knowingly attempt flying through turbulence!

In this world, the strategy for entrepreneurs and innovators is two-fold: to build enough competencies within, and also to leverage the strength of others. Just as growing children use the strengths of adults around them to accomplish their tasks until they are big enough to manage on their own, growing companies need to be smart to rely on the ecosystem of companies around them to make the dice fall right for them.

The stakes are high, and the rewards immense. Every decade sees a few giants emerge in the corporate world. Every new trend disrupts some and creates opportunities for others. In the same way, the road to building tomorrow's world will also create some big winners. The ones who succeed will be those who combine creation with aggregation, strategy with execution, and technology with tactics. Ready for the ride?

Next Week: Tomorrow’s World (continued)

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Happenings

There is a lot happening in the world of technology. Even as we think about how we can leverage these changes, let us take at some of the unfolding events – first globally, then in India.

Om Malik wrote, in a new column entitled “Coverge Sense” for Business 2.0:

Though a slow starter, a new era of convergence is upon us, and it is the driving force of change and growth for the entire electronics industry. We're no longer talking about the PC vs. TV debate, mind you. Think about this: Always-on Internet connections of both the wired and the wireless kind have become commonplace even in the farthest corners of the world. At the same time, Internet speeds are inexorably increasing, in some places topping 50 megabits per second, enough to download programming from three television channels simultaneously. The upshot: Cable companies want to sell voice and wireless services along with their current products, video and data. Phone companies want to add video streams to their package of offerings.

And if that is not enough confluence for you, we're seeing the continued digitization of media. Folks are buying new music by virtual truckloads from Apple's iTunes store, while companies like Vodafone are offering television streams on their 3G cell-phone networks. TiVo has entered the popular vernacular, if not the annals of profitability, as it streams cable programming and, soon, Internet programming throughout the home. Radio is leaving its terrestrial roots and is being replaced by signals from the big birds in the sky. Video-on-demand, long an expense item for adventurous cable chief executives, is now as commonplace as a cable set-top box. Microsoft and Intel, two big proponents of personal computers, are betting the farm on the digitization trend.

David Kirkpatrick of Fortune wrote about the challenges faced by the big companies in an article entitled “Technology in Turmoil”:

It's no secret that Microsoft is struggling to justify its business model in the face of an open-source onslaught. The newly released open source Firefox shows continued signs of taking market share from Microsoft in the critical browser business—potentially the software giant's most valuable chokepoint.

Intel, the other duopoly partner at the top of the industry, also seems suddenly weakened. While some recent articles overstate the scale of threat that AMD poses to Intel, that danger is real nonetheless.

Look at Sun—it wasn't long ago that everyone assumed the company was toast. Now nobody seems sure either way. What does it mean that Sun is making its crown jewel, the Solaris operating system, open source?..Now with Solaris, they can get the same thing with an industrial-strength operating system. And Sun, which was a proprietary hardware company only yesterday it seems, is now one of AMD's most important allies.

Then over in the enterprise software business, dogged little Salesforce.com continues to define an entirely new approach to using technology—so customers can merely think of what they're getting as functionality. Who cares if it's called software or not?

Let's not leave out services…The new globalized business model poses gigantic threats to incumbent services players, particularly those that aren't sufficiently diversified, like Cap Gemini, Ernst & Young, EDS, and Accenture. As Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani asks, how will these players compete in a world where their customers have the option of vastly lower prices for comparable services from Indian companies? How quickly can they shift their own employee base to the lower-cost model?

Tomorrow: Happenings (continued)

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Happenings (Part 2)

Consider what Verizon is doing in the US – it is getting rid of the public-switched telephone network to put in place an IP-based network. Technology Review writes:

[Verizon is building] a new network that makes more efficient use of its switching stations and physical wires by working more like the Internet, and that wires up customers’ homes with high-capacity fiber-optic lines. With such an infrastructure in place, the theory holds, the longtime supplier of plain old telephone service can change into a new kind of company, one that can compete in a world where media giants like Comcast are blending services such as television, telephone, and Internet access.

Listen to people like the Jacobys [of Verizon], and it’s easy to imagine that in a few years Verizon customers may not even have phones, or at least not ones that only make phone calls. Instead, they’ll have devices that surf the Web, transmit video phone calls and still pictures, and deliver TV programming, TiVo style. Customers will use their cell phones to instant-message their kids’ TV screens that it’s time to stop playing video games and start doing homework. They’ll control what their phones—or rather, their personal telecommunications networks—do in a way that’s simply impossible today.

Or at least, that’s what Verizon executives hope. The company astonished Wall Street and telecom insiders in January when it announced that it would spend $2 billion over the next two years to move to Internet-type switching—a far more ambitious overhaul than those planned by its sibling phone companies, such as SBC and BellSouth…Verizon managers admit they’re spending the money without a full understanding of how the new network will be used or what services consumers will want most. According to Paul Lacouture, president of Verizon’s network services group, it’s an investment the company has to make simply to survive in a fast-changing industry. Moving to packet switching now, he says, means “we future-proof our network.”

Verizon’s Waltham Lab is where tomorrow’s world is being prototyped.

Software developers created the Universal Media Communicator, a program for desktop PCs that lets users seamlessly transfer calls from cell phones to wireless PDAs to traditional landlines to IP phones, without ever putting anyone on hold. One of the program’s myriad features represents separate phone calls as icons that users can drag and drop to initiate conference calls. The idea is to let the customers control their phone service—where calls reach them, say, or when and whether their phones ring.

“A lot of people think you want to blow up the public switched telephone network. But what you really want is this evolution” to Internet Protocol, says Michael Weintraub, director of converged services at the lab. It isn’t that the current network is so bad—it’s just that packet-switched networks make everything faster, cheaper, and easier to use. And they turn the tables on who has control.

But will people pay for the new features enabled by packet switching? Come to think of it, what will people pay for, once voice calling is simply one entrée on a vast menu of potential services?

SBC, another of the American Baby Bells, is also building out the future. Its CEO, Edward E. Whitacre Jr, according to The Wall Street Journal, aims to transform SBC into a state-of-the-art communications and TV giant that will have a dominant presence in consumers' living rooms. He plans to challenge cable companies head-on with a full slate of video services that SBC will bundle with Internet access, wireless calling and traditional phone service -- all for about $100 a month. He said in an interview:

[In the living room of the future,] you can be watching television, probably on a thin screen plasma screen. If you get a phone call, the number displays on the television screen, doesn't interrupt the picture -- and it will tell you who's calling. If you wish to take [the call] you can take it by pushing a button on your remote.

You can sit there and view content off of your computer -- maybe it's family pictures. Or, somebody sent you an e-mail; it will pop up on the screen while you're watching TV in the left-hand corner. If you are watching a basketball game and you would like to have an overhead view, you'd click a button and you change the camera angle. If you're interested in what everybody else is watching at that time, or maybe what's hot on TV, you can push a button and it will tell you who's watching what across the nation.

Landline and wireless are certainly melding together. More people have wireless phones, more people have broadband, they're on the Internet, they can get that at home, they can get that on the cellphone. Video is now a part of the equation.

A good example of convergence is something we have out there now called unified communications, where with one device you can get your e-mails, get your faxes, your messages -- either wireline or wireless messages -- just by calling one number. So, it's all converged.

Tomorrow: Happenings (continued)

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Happenings (Part 3)

Here are some more snippets which give a glimpse of tomorrow’s world:

The Seattle Times wrote about Yahoo’s plans to create original broadband content to be delivered via the Internet: “People familiar with the discussions say Yahoo! is pressing entertainment-industry producers and talent agents to start pitching new shows and short films that the Internet giant could license for viewing online. No longer satisfied to simply repackage film trailers and TV clips, some Yahoo! executives believe the surge in broadband connections means the Internet may finally be ready to operate more like a television network, these people said. The business model is unclear, but Yahoo! is considering advertising and subscription fees to cover the cost of the programs, according to a person familiar with the situation.”

Russell Beattie wrote about Commuicontent: “Communicontent to me, is a byproduct of communication where traditional content is magically created. As a corollary, the forms of communication that can best be expressed as content almost naturally become communicontent. See this weblog? This is communicontent. I used to drive my friends on mailing lists crazy by writing all these long, in-depth emails. Now I just write all the same thoughts in my weblog instead. The only difference is that the viewers aren't restricted. I'm still just communicating my personal thoughts. It's communication, but because it's been captured in a fixed state to be found later, it's also content.”

Nokia's enterprise solutions manager Mary McDowell was quoted in Barron’s: "In 2008 and 2009, the Internet Protocol will be used everywhere, and that will be a key enabler of new services. At the moment, we are still a cellular communications-centric company. In five year's time, we will be a mobility-centric company.”

Fortune wrote in a recent issue (December 6, 2004) about WiMax in Argentina: “Millicom Argentina says it is planning to roll out a WiMax-like service late this year that will cover one-fifth of Argentina’s population by the end of 2005. The service will give businesses and residents high-speed Internet access for everything from Web browsing to video-conferencing to telephone calls.” Note: we are talking Argentina, not America!

The Economist wrote recently that the growth potential is wowing the stockmarket: “Expectations are now sky-high for the two companies. Will satellite radio grow at the expense of terrestrial radio in the same way that cable and satellite television have won viewers from the broadcast networks? Sirius and XM Radio have a combined market value of roughly $15 billion. But they together made a loss of $900m or so last year, and are not expected to break even until 2007-09. The five largest pure terrestrial radio firms, by comparison, made profits of around $200m yet have a combined market capitalisation of $8 billion.”

Carly Fiorina of HP wrote in The Economist’s The World In 2005: “A funny thing happened on the way to 2005: the digital revolution actually became real. Walk around any city or town and what do you see? You see young people text messaging; commuters jamming to their iPods; friends snapping photos on their camera phones. Look a bit further and you see doctors’ decisions aided by patient information called up on hand-held devices; teachers using wireless technology as tools; parents printing photos on cordless printers before leaving their children’s football games. Look further still and you see executives going digital and cutting billions of dollars out of supply chains. And if you go to Africa or India, you may even see wireless devices providing opportunity in communities that don’t even have electricity. It’s a revolution in any sense of the word. But I have another name for it: a warm-up act. We are entering an era where everything is going digital. It’s going to be the main event of our lives for decades to come.”

There is little doubt that change is coming to us from multiple sides. And we need to look no further than what’s happened in India in the past few years.

Tomorrow: New India Glimpses

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: New India Glimpses

India is witnessing amazing change. While life on a day-to-day basis still has its challenges (poor road infrastructure, erratic power, limited bandwidth, growing urban-rural divide, quality and availability of education, a population that is still growing more rapidly than available resources), there is a lot that is happening to augur well for the future.

Cellphones: Recently, the number of cellphones in India passed the number of landlines. This is not just a statistical milestone. It signifies the choice that Indians are making. By leapfrogging to a wirefree world, communications in India is being transformed, and so is life. Hoardings in Mumbai announce the availability of TV via EDGE networks and railway reservations via the handset. About 2 million new users a month are being added to the current base of about 45 million cellphone users. India has one of the lowest tariffs in the world for mobile telephony. Text messaging has become a way of interaction for many. Value-added services like ringtones and gaming are growing. State-of-the-art networks and feature-rich handsets across India are beckoning the next set of users. Cellphone companies are profitable at average monthly revenues of Rs 400 ($9) per user.

Cable TV: A hundred channels for all of Rs 250 ($5.50) – that’s what about 55 million households pay to enjoy their television. And there is no dearth of new channels launching every month. I still remember the launch of Zee TV, India’s first private channel – it happened just over a decade ago. A mélange of cable companies are now tying up with Internet Service Providers to offer “broadband” (more like, always-on narrowband) Internet to homes.

Wireless Data: Reliance Infocomm’s CDMA-based wireless data networks covers more than a thousand towns and cities across India. Lottery terminals, ATMs and even credit card authorization terminals are using it to connect to centralised servers. Providing speeds of 30-60 Kbps (versus a theoretical maximum of 115 Kbps), these data networks are also providing laptop users the ability to connect to the Internet in under five seconds for 40 paise a minute (less than a penny) from almost anywhere in urban and semi-urban India.

Cybercafes: Even as the cost of ownership of a computer remains high, thousands of cybercafes function as “Tech 7-11s” in neighbourhoods. Sify’s 2,000 iWays offer not just Internet access, but also Internet telephony and video conferencing.

Internet Telephony: I still remember the time a few years ago when phone calls to the US cost nearly Rs 100 a minute. The other day, one of the VoIP company sales representatives came calling offering calls for less than Rs 2 a minute. Smart Indians are also buying by Vonage boxes in the US and getting them to India to make calls to the US for a flat rate of $30 (Rs 1,350) a month. Geography indeed has no barriers!

eCommerce: For all who think we have been left behind in the b2c revolution, think again. Indian Railways and Deccan Airways have proven that Indians will pay for transactions over the Internet. The Indian Railways website address one of the major pain points in the life of many – booking train tickets and checking the reservation status of waitlisted tickets. Deccan Airways, one of the new low-cost carriers, does bookings of Rs 1.5 crore ($330,000) daily over the Internet.

Tomorrow: New India Glimpses (continued)

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: New India Glimpses (Part 2)

Matrimonials and Jobs: The way people find lifemates and new employers is changing. Sites like Shaadi.com and BharatMatrimony.com offer to connect prospective brides and grooms. Job portals like MonsterIndia.com (which also owns JobsAhead) and Naukri.com have increased liquidity and fluidity for people seeking new career opportunities.

Retailing: India is witnessing an unprecedented retail revolution as malls and chains proliferate. Investments in IT are helping them not only manage their supply-chain effectively but also build and maintain customer relationships. The malls and multiplexes are becoming new hangout places. With the boom in outsourced services, a growing youthful population has more to spend. Easier access to credit is also fueling an appliances and automobiles boom.

The Rs 500-a-month PC: Recently, HCL launched a computer on installment payments – Rs 500 per month. This is a good start, even as computing by itself faces challenges of affordability, desirability, accessibility and manageability. The computing industry is not learning two important lessons from the telecom industry – that of zero-management user devices and subscription plans (as opposed to installments).

Rural India: For a variety of reasons, rural India still remains frozen in time. As governments start believing that free electricity to farmers can be a passport for electoral success, investments in other areas are likely to get compromised. There are a few signs of hope – ITC’s eChoupals and n-Logue’s kiosks are providing a platform for trade and services. But rural India still has a long way to go.

India is arriving as a market for global companies. Virgin is considering investments in telecom and low-cost airlines. Cisco closed a $100 million deal with VSNL for metro Ethernet. Most luxury brands are already available or will be. India is a melting pot for many simultaneous revolutions across multiple industries. As urban incomes grow, a generation seeks to race ahead. With one of the most youthful populations in the world, aspirations are on the rise. The next few years are critical. If we can do things right, we can unlock the potential of millions. If not…it will be yet another case of so near, yet so far. The race is not with China, it is against our own mindsets. Tomorrow’s world is happening. Our actions can hasten it or delay it. Hopefully, this time around, we can cross the chasm. For that, India needs to build its digital infrastructure right.

As HP’s Carly Fiorina wrote in The World in 2005: “Getting there is going to require the right blend of realism and optimism. We need to be realistic that none of this is going to be easy. But we also need to be optimistic, because if we get this right, digital technology will make more things more possible for more people in more places than at any time in history. That alone is worth the journey.” The next Google will come out of the opportunities that technology is creating in the context of the next users. What can we do to build out tomorrow’s world first in India and then across other emerging markets?

Next Week: Tomorrow’s World (continued)

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: A Day in the Future

To create the future, one needs to envision it first. Some time ago, Atanu Dey and I just did that. We wrote out a small story of what life could be.

Her name is Meena. She lives with her parents and her younger brother, Anil, in a modest two bedroom apartment in a middle-class neighborhood in a small city in India. She goes to a junior college where she is studying pre-med.

It is early in the evening. Entering the living room, she switches on a light and then pushes a button on a little blue box the size of a shoe-box sitting next to a monitor. The monitor lights up immediately displays what looks like a PC desktop. A little dialog box blinks "Who is it?" She types her login name "meena101". "What is our secret word, Meena?" She responds.

In a flash the desktop changes to resume where she had left off earlier that day when she had accessed "MyComputer" at the school computing center. An ad appears in a little window. It lasts for about 10 seconds informing her of a sale on school supplies going on in her neighborhood supermarket. She clicks on the "ToDo List" and makes a note in there to buy some stationery and dismisses the ad window.

She checks her inbox and quickly responds to an email. She is in a hurry to get to her assignment from the biology class done which is due by 10 pm tonight. She has already done most of it earlier that day at school. On the desktop, that file sits exactly as she had left it. She “googles” for some more information on 'platypus' and after a bit finishes her assignment. She is satisfied with it and she mails it off to the teacher.

Now comes the part she really enjoys. She is learning French. She clicks an icon and a streaming video resumes from where she had left off a few days ago. It is a multimedia course and it is world-class and on top of it all, it is free. She takes a little test in the end and is satisfied with the results.

Meena is in the middle of editing her cyber-club newsletter when her mother calls her to come help. Without a second thought, she clicks on an icon "Bye now" and then pushes the button on the little blue box. Meena's session on the NetPC is done for now but she can restart exactly where she left off from school or from the neighborhood computing center. Anil wanders in from play and switches on the NetPC and logs in and plays games and does some chatting with friends. Since he is very young, his parents have set his profile to “Minor” which means that his surfing of the web is severely restricted to age appropriate content.

Later their father logs in and balances his checkbook, pays a few bills, and makes a call to his brother in the US. Then he changes profiles and the desktop switches seamlessly to be what he uses at his small business. Without having to carry a briefcase, he is able to check on his work from home or anywhere around the country.

Tomorrow: NetPC and NetGrid

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: NetPC and NetGrid

Continuing with our little peep into the future…

So what else is new, you might ask. Isn't this what millions of users do all over the world? They do but not in middle class India. Or at least, they could not till about late 2005 in middle-class India. What Meena was using was a NetPC—a device that displays a remote desktop over a broadband connection while all the processing, the applications, and content are on a centralised grid computer (NetGrid) which delivers computing as a utility much like electricity, telephony, or television.

Middle-class India is poor by developed country standards. About 40 million households with annual incomes of between Rs 1 lakh to 5 lakhs ($2,200 to 11,000) constitute the middle-class. Even at rock-bottom prices of Rs 18,000 ($400) for a PC, a vanishingly small number of middle-class households can afford one and even then, among those who can afford one, most don't find a PC very useful because of PCs don't deliver a rich enough portfolio of services to justify the expense.

A disruptive change occurred in late 2005. Computing was released from being tied to a PC and became available to a very large number of users as a utility much the same as electricity, water, and telephone service were. The change was brought about by three distinct innovations which mutually supported each other. First, was the availability of a NetPC, an access device that had the look and feel of a PC but at a price that was comparable to that of a cellular handset or about Rs 5,000 ($110). Second, the wide availability of inexpensive broadband connectivity throughout cities in India. Finally, the creation of a computing platform which aggregated within it all the processing power and storage sitting in individual PCs and made available a very wide range of applications and content which could be accessed from all across the country using the NetPCs.

This disruptive change allowed the rapid adoption of computing in more than 40 million homes and about 50 million other people in small and medium business and in educational institutions. The adoption was rapid because four principal barriers to the use of computers were lowered: Affordability, Desirability, Accessibility and Manageability.

PCs are hard to manage and administer, what with installation of software, frequent upgrades, spam, viruses, and so on. Desirability of using computing is directly related to how relevant the applications and content available to the user. Accessibility is important in an economy where everyone cannot afford to own a dedicated piece of equipment and needs shared access to computing facilities. Affordability is related to how low the entry barrier can be as regards to the capital equipment needed.

What NetPCs (along with the NetGrid) did was revolutionize the whole concept of computing for the masses. And in doing so, it made two other markets viable. First, it changed the broadband connectivity market. By making computing a utility delivered over broadband, it created the demand side of the market. That large demand brought economies of scale to bear on the supply of broadband connectivity and thus pushed costs and prices to levels that made the market work.

The second market it enabled was the market for applications from independent software vendors. Piracy caused the market to fail: Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) would not develop applications because they could not recover the cost of development. Lack of specialised applications lead to low desirability for computers which in turn depressed the applications market further. NetGrid provided a platform for ISVs to bring their applications to market free from the piracy issue.

The question is: how do we make this future a reality? The five dimensions we need to address are: devices, networks, infrastructure, services and payments.

Tomorrow: Devices

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Devices

Computing in the developed markets over the past 25 years has been dominated by personal computers – running DOS first and Windows later on x86 architecture chips. Intel and Microsoft have dominated this world. The past few years have seen the emergence of PDAs and smartphones which deliver a small but increasingly growing subset of functionality of the computer. It is now not uncommon to see to see emails with a footnote attesting to the fact that the email was sent via a Blackberry.

For all their success, computers are outnumbered by cellphones. In fact, for many in the emerging markets, the cellphone is the first personal device that they get. It is not just upper-class consumers and business users who are seen using cellphones. From vegetable sellers to construction workers, from auto-rickshaw drivers to fishermen, from teenagers to grandparents, the cellphone is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in emerging markets.

Both devices – PCs and cellphones – have their advantages and disadvantages. The full-size input-output attachments of a computer are unmatched as compared to the miniaturised (in comparison) display and keyboard of a cellphone. The computer also has a vast library of applications developed over the years. Its versatility to work in the home, business and educational context is what has made it one of the greatest inventions of our generation.

Yet, the computer remains largely a developed market gizmo. In emerging markets, its dollar-denominated cost has limited its appeal to a fraction of the potential user base. In recent times, manageability challenges have increased due to the proliferation of viruses and spyware specifically targeting the Windows platform. So, even as the top of the pyramid in emerging markets can use the computers, the next 90% remains a non-consumption market.

By contrast, the cellphone user base has grown phenomenally. In India, 2 million cellphones are purchased each month, about six times the sales figure of computers. While the cellphone caters to a natural desire for communications, its ease of use has no doubt helped. Even as cellphones become smarter, they will be limited by three factors in comparison to computers: the size of the keyboard, the resolution and size of the display, and the control exercised by the operator for services delivered to the device.

To bring the next set of users into the world of digital services needs a computer which borrows some ideas from the cellphone – think of it as a thin client or a “network commPuter.” It is a device which is built assuming the existence of communications networks. It has the footprint of a computer with the affordability and manageability of a cellphone. The commPuter is a zero-management device which does almost no computing locally. It relies instead on a computing- and storage-centric grid for becoming useful. Think about it: the radio, television and the cellphone are useless without networks. It is time for the computer to also make the transition. This is the secret to building the Rs 5,000 ($100) computer – about half of that covers the cost of the device, and the other half is the cost of a refurbished monitor. (The TV lacks the display resolution – it is better to stick to a computer monitor.)

Tomorrow: Networks

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Networks

There are two types of networks which are relevant in the context of inter-connecting the network commPuters. The first is the LAN, and the second is the WAN. In the local area, Ethernet holds sway globally. In fact, even in the emerging markets, the state of the LANs is nearly as good as the developed markets. With 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps LANs, there is plenty of bandwidth to service the needs of the access devices in enterprises, educational institutions, government offices, and the like. Where there is a huge lag is in the wide area network. More specifically, the issue is in the connectivity available on the last mile.

Let’s take India as an example. There are two possible connectivity options for Internet (and grid) access at present: via the telephone line, and via the cable connection. Both will not go far in India, and that is where the short-term for real broadband looks bleak. With BSNL and MTNL controlling most of the 40+ million local loops and the government deciding not to unbundle it, we are at the mercy of the two (soon to be merged into one) government telcos to provide us with high-speed xDSL connectivity. (High-speed does not mean shared 128 or 256 Kbps access, but genuine multi-megabit connectivity.) The cable companies are doing their best to fill the gap, but are hampered by the quality of the cable, other technical challenges which hinder two-way access, and the investments they can make.

What the “singleton” network commPuters in India need is broadband wireless connectivity. We need to leapfrog to next-generation networks which can blanket urban and semi-urban population clusters and deliver high-speed (512 Kbps-2 Mpbs) connectivity over the last mile, and then hub these connections into fibre back-haul networks, which already exist in plenty across India.

These broadband wireless networks can come via multiple technologies and providers. IIT-Madras has developed a cable wireless technology, which uses cable for the downstream connection (1 Mbps) and wireless (via CorDECT) for the upstream connection (100 Kbps). Mesh Wireless networks could use the unlicenced WiFi spectrum to provide last-mile connectivity. Then, there is WiMax. The mobile operators could roll out 3G (and perhaps, 4G) on their networks. Considering that voice revenues are likely to flatten (and even fall, with VoIP), the mobile phone companies in fact need to think seriously about getting into data networks.

So, even as the short-term outlook for broadband remains bleak in India, I am optimistic in the long-term (2006 and beyond). The broadband wireless revolution in India will happen. The government will, however, need to be forward looking on making spectrum available for some of the technologies. The Indian telecom companies and ISPs do have the financial strength (with assistance from international investors and partners) to build out an always-on, high-speed and ubiquitous network. The New India has to built, literally, out of thin air.

Tomorrow: Infrastructure

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Infrastructure

Tomorrow’s world of server-centric computing will need a backend infrastructure which can provide the platform for computing, communications, storage and services. This “commPuting grid” is what will enable the utility-like future. While in the developed markets, grid computing is taken to mean the aggregation and use of resources from across the network, I use it to refer to a centralised platform more along the lines of a power grid. I envision data centres having large clusters of commodity hardware providing all the services that users need over broadband networks.

Three secular trends provide support for the creation of the centralised grid. First, increasingly cheaper processing and storage hardware. Moore's law in action. Second, greater availability of inexpensive open-source software. The quality and range of open-source software compares favorably to commercial software. And finally, the rapid deployment of broadband networks and the convergence of computing and communications.

In fact, if we look back at the past fifty years of computing, centralised computing via mainframes and minis has dominated for more than half that period. Many of the world’s mission-critical applications still use centralised computing. In fact, the personal computing era can be thought of as a deviant – created at a time when networks did not exist. Once networks are present, computing can go back to its roots.

And in a sense, it is already doing so. The growth of the Internet over the past decade is hastening this trend, most recently exemplified by the services being launched by Google on its gigantic distributed computing platform – which the outside world sees as a single, large computer. The likes of Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and Salesforce are also allies in a world that is slowly shifting away from the “thick desktop” to “web-centric” services. What all these companies have in common is a massive, scaleable grid, built for the most part with commodity hardware and open-source software.

Much of our personal world is already distributed across databases on the network. From mail (Google) to files (Yahoo), from search history (A9) to purchasing history (Amazon), from reputation (eBay) to subscriptions (Bloglines), from blog (TypePad) to photos (Flickr), we are already part of a world built on computing grids.

As the wide area networks become faster, the line blurring the desktop to the webtop will disappear. Our desktop too will become part of the grid. We will have come a full circle. Computing will have finally become a utility – just like electricity and water. It will be something we take for granted. It will become invisible – and yet make our world visible to us whenever we want and wherever we are.

Next Week: Tomorrow’s World (continued)

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Services

Servers are the core of the new “commPuting” architecture in tomorrow’s world. It is the services which create value for the rest of the ecosystem of devices and the networks. As Atanu wrote on his blog recently: “Stand-alone computing a la PCs delivering ‘services’ is fine for those who can afford that luxury, but is definitely a show-stopper for those who have very little disposable income and yet can make use of those services that PCs deliver. I remind myself repeatedly that people do not want a PC -- what they actually want are the services that a PC delivers. As long as we focus on the fact that it is services -- and not the hardware nor the software -- that matter to people, we will not end up putting the cart before the horse. So if a firm were to deliver those set of services at an affordable price, it is immaterial to the consumer whether the consumer (of those services) uses a PC or some other device.”

The first service that is important is that of computing and storage. The grid needs to deliver the user’s desktop – a dashboard from where the user can manage and interact with other services. As part of the desktop, users would be provided email clients, a productivity suite (word processor and spreadsheet), a web browser, and Instant Messaging clients. The browser makes possible access to the Web. This desktop needs to also be available via the cellphone – because it is highly likely that the user will have access to both. The computer can be used to manage the desktop, while the cellphone can be used for alerts, short messages, among other things. So, the grid needs to be able to deliver an appropriately formatted virtual desktop to both network computers and cellphones, allowing users anywhere access to their data.

The second service is that of specific software applications and content relevant to the user’s interests. Thus, businesses could have a menu of industry-specific applications to chose from. Students would have access to a library of educational content available to them. For entertainment, there would be online games. To make this a reality, there needs to a platform on which third-party application developers and content providers can make their offerings available. Microsoft’s Windows API made this possible for software developers, while the open formats of the Web made it possible on the Internet.

The third service is around communications. As IP networks proliferate, voice itself will become an application over the next-generation networks. We are already seeing this happen with Skype. Communications is a fundamental need – so far, voice has been for the most part a service available primarily through the telcom networks. As computing and communications converge on a common network, telephony will be a critical application on the grid.

The fourth service is built around user-generated content. We are seeing this happen through blogs. Given an easy platform to create and disseminate content, users can bring forth their creativity and experiences to create a rich interchange of ideas, words and images. This is the shift that will happen in the world of media in the coming years – instead of there being only the big broadcast websites, there will be a very large number of niche sites, each catering to its own audience. This is what Chris Andersen referred to as the “long tail” in a recent article in Wired.

Finally, we will also see broadband content move to this platform – but in an on-demand variant. TiVo has already shown what is possible by giving users the ability to time-shift television. Increasingly, that will be the way we will consume all entertainment – at a time and place of our chosing. There is also an opportunity to create non-films and non-music-based content. Imagine for example if instead of just reading the recipes, they came alive with video attachments showing the actual cooking process.

Thus, tomorrow’s world will see various services become digital and converge on to a common delivery platform. The network computer will be the portal to a world not just of computing, but also telephony and television. It will be an on-demand world – available to us on a screen which is part of a cellphone or a commPuter.

Tomorrow: Payments

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Payments

Tomorrow’s world will have network commPuters, broadband wireless networks, centralised grids and a wide variety of on-demand services. The question to answer is: what are the money flows in this ecosystem?

Traditionally, the worlds of computing and telecom have been very different in their approach to payments. The computer industry, for the most part, has the users assemble the various components and pay for them independently and upfront. The telecom industry has tended to subsidise the device and then charge the user a monthly subscription with a lock-in for a specified period. Which model is likely to prevail?

I believe that the payments model in tomorrow’s world will closely mirror that of today’s telecom industry. With a zero-management access device, the “commPuting” industry will move to a subscription model for the whole solution – device, network access, infrastructure usage, and the services. This is because the next set of users will not be able to afford large upfront payments or be savvy enough for putting together the whole solution.

This will create the need for “commPuting utilities” – entities which aggregate and brand the full solution and user experience, and deliver to users across different market segments. There will be horizontal utilities which will work with last-mile partners or virtual utilities to take the solution to the end customers across homes, enterprises, educational institutions, cybercafes and rural areas. There will also be specialised utilities which focus on niches based on offering or market – for example, online gaming or education. The commPuting utilities will need to provide for user provisioning and billing, along with revenue sharing. It is very much what the mobile operators do for the various value-added services that they offer on their network.

An interesting element in emerging markets is that of pre-paid services. Because the credit system is not as well developed and many of the users may not have bank accounts or credit cards, there will be need to offer the services on a pre-paid basis. This is what has helped the mobile industry – in India, nearly three-quarters of the users are on pre-paid connections. A similar approach will need to be taken for commPuting.

What is a good price point for the minimum basic service? Two price points that are known in India are that of Rs 250 ($5.50) per month for cable TV services, and about twice that in urban India for cellphones. I believe that a price point of about Rs 700 ($15) per month would be very attractive for the complete commPuting solution. For the singleton user segment, the break-up of this would be as follows: Rs 200 for the device, Rs 100 for the grid infrastructure and a set of basic services, Rs 350 for the broadband connection, and Rs 50 for the channel who does the installation and support.

This, then, is the vision for tomorrow’s world: a whole, end-to-end solution at a price point of a rupee an hour (translating to Rs 700 per month). In a country like India, there is an opportunity to provide at least 100 million such “commPuting” connections across 40 million employees in enterprises, 45 million homes in urban and semi-urban India, 1 million schools needing 10 commPuters each and 50,000 colleges requiring 200 commPuters each. This is what will build the digital infrastructure of India. This is as big, if not bigger, than what we have seen happen in telecom over the past 5-7 years. With a platform as rich as this, we can then let the mind roam free on what tomorrow will be like.

Tomorrow: Five-in-one

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Five-in-one

Our five-dimensional world of tomorrow’s commPuting utility comprises:

network computers as zero-management access devices

ubiquitous broadband wireless networks

server-based computing and storage grid as the underlying infrastructure

centrally accessible services built around hosted software and content

utility-like subscription-based payment model

This utility combines the best of multiple models that we see around us:

i-mode’s platform: One of the earliest successes for providing value-added services for end users was NTTDocomo’s i-mode mobile service in Japan. What i-mode did was create a platform for a wide variety of service providers to create and offer innovative creations through its platform to the mobile users. I-mode in turn took care of the billing and did a revenue share with the service provider. I see the commPuting utility operator as playing a similar role – for software and content.

Salesforce’s hosted software: Salesforce has demonstrated the success of the ASP (application software provider) model. It offers business applications on its centralised platform at prices starting at $65 a month per user. In essence, software has become a service. Extend this to the operating system and the desktop applications. Imagine Windows and Office being available for a few dollars a month off the centralised grid. Not only does this take care of piracy (akin to the way Chinese providers offer online gaming) but it also helps create opportunities for Microsoft’s existing developer base by offering them a way to vend their applications.

TiVo’s time-shifted content: TiVo demonstrated to the world that there was another way to watch television. On-demand. Time-shifted entertainment can be extended to mean any kind of content, available whenever the user wants. In essence, any display becomes a TV screen when content is delivered off a server. Content does not have to be limited to just what the television networks broadcast, or what movies exist. Anything which can be digitized can be distributed (Netflix-style) to servers close to where the users are.

Google’s desktop ads: As the various search engines battle to deliver relevant ads to users, the ultimate prize is the user desktop. While Google doesn’t yet do ads on the desktop, I believe it will do so in the near future – as will the other search engines who are rapidly morphing into ad-delivery networks. The desktop offers a profiled user. And guess what – in our world of tomorrow, the desktop is served from the grid, making it easier to show highly relevant and targeted ads, offering the potential to subsidise access costs for users.

Yahoo’s personalisation: Every user is different. What Yahoo’s personalisation through My Yahoo offers is the ability to put together a page based on one’s interests. This same customisation needs to be available via the grid. Think of it as “my dashboard” – available not just on the computer but also on the cellphone. There is no need to sync data across devices, since everything is centrally stored. Alerts can be delivered via email or IM (if the user is online) or via SMS (if the user is offline). Welcome to the real-time world – where everyone is always reachable.

Tomorrow: Five Markets

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Five Markets

The next set of users in the emerging markets can be divided into five major segments:

Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs): The large companies will probably continue to use the Wintel PCs for the foreseeable future. But the SMEs now can automate their businesses in a flash. Instead of going from 1 computer for every 10 employees to perhaps 3 in 10 in the coming year, they can get a computer on everyone’s desktop immediately – since all it will cost is Rs 700 per employee per month. Which means that anyone earning more than Rs 7,000 ($150) salary needs to become only 10% more productive for the business to benefit. With computers for a small fraction of users, even email is not a mission-critical application. But with a computer for every employee, they can now think: with this digital infrastructure, how can I do my business differently? This will lead to the creation of real-time enterprises.

Educational Institutions: Educating India’s 200 million students is no ordinary challenge. We are building India’s future. And yet, at the ground level, we are hobbled by teachers who are either not competent, or worse, not available. That is not a problem that can be solved overnight. But by putting together a school-in-a-box for the million schools in India and a library-in-a-box for the colleges, we can at least start offering students an opportunity to learn – and perhaps help the teachers teach better. Take for example, a college with 1,000 students. Today, it is likely to have no more than 20-25 computers. In that event, each of the students would barely get an hour a week with a computer. Now imagine if that same college had 250 computers, each available for Rs 700 a month. Each student can now get a couple hours a day, for no more than Rs 6 per day. Put this infrastructure in place and now think: how can we deliver education differently?

Homes and Shops: The enigma that India’s computer industry faces is why computers rank at the bottom of the top ten wish list of household appliances. It is not just a question of affordability: over 15 million homes can afford computers, but barely 3 million have actually bought one. It is the issue of desirability – where are the compelling applications? With rampant piracy, few developers have the interest in creating the relevant applications and content which can make the computer ascend up the wanted list. This can change if applications and content can be delivered centrally for a monthly subscription fee. The same applies to the other singleton market: the millions of small shops which make up the last mile of the retain supply chain. If their transactions were automated, companies could build to order and do real-time replenishment – just like Wal-mart plans to do with its RFIDs!

Tomorrow: Five Markets (continued) and Five New Opportunities

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TECH TALK: Tomorrow's World: Five Markets (Part 2)

Tech 7-11s: The communications-centric cybercafes of today need to change into neighbourhood commPuting centres. For those who cannot afford to have a computer at home or would like to try it out before purchasing or are on the move, the Tech 7-11s should offer all the benefits and conveniences that they would get if they actually owned one. This is easily done here because both storage and computing are centralised. Tech 7-11s can easily be equipped with high-speed connections and can have a large number of the network commPuters. They will also need to offer training and support for users in the neighbourhood. They could also serve like the cable MSO (multi-service operator), providing a distribution point for services in the community. In some ways, the Tech 7-11s will play the role of the STD PCOs – offering a community service until most people have a personal device.

Rural Areas: India’s rural areas will continue to remain the final frontier. Hobbled by lack of power and connectivity, computers are a distant dream for most. And yet, if the basic infrastructure of electricity and telecom can be put in place, computing has great potential to become the building block for various services. One approach would be to create hubs in rural areas which can service a cluster of villages – along the lines of the idea of Rural Infrastructure and Services Commons proposed by Atanu Dey and Vinod Khosla. These hubs could serve as the rural equivalent of the Tech 7-11s, and use CorDECT or alternate technologies to support network commPuters in villages. Rural India needs its own rural commPuting utilities to usher in a revolution which can finally begin to bridge the information divide that separates India from Bharat.

Last Word: Five New Opportunities

There are many opportunities which this new world opens up. Besides the need for low-cost network computers, broadband networks and the grid infrastructure – all of which are capital-intensive, there are many other starting points for entrepreneurs:

LAN Grids: Think of these as smaller versions of the commPuting grid for the LANs of SMEs and educational institutions till the time that broadband networks arrive. The LAN Grid becomes the distribution point for software and content.

Broadband Content Factory: A huge world of broadband “microcontent” is waiting to be created. Look beyond music, television and films. Imagine making available videos of all the conferences and seminars that take place every day. Making and distributing video content is so much easier now.

Software Aggregator: There is a need to aggregate the various open-source software applications into suites for different verticals. Companies like SpikeSource and SourceLabs are the early efforts in this area, and go beyond what the likes of Red Hat and Novell are doing.

Micro-eBays: Imagine creating localised information exchanges and trading platforms – combining the best of Craigslist and eBay, for neighbourhood communities. This could be made available first for enterprises and educational institutions where people know and trust each other already.

Micropayments infrastructure: The new world will also need to way to handle payments of smaller denominations. India and emerging markets need the equivalent of a PayPal, perhaps built around pre-paid cards that people could use for access to the services.

Tomorrow’s world is happening around us. Our actions can expedite it and create a better and richer future for all of us. The solutions this world needs are not necessarily going to come from today’s giants. In fact, this new world offers the opportunity to create new giants – from the middle- and bottom-of-the-pyramid of the world. The next billion users in the world’s emerging markets beckon us. It is an opportunity to do good and do well. Will we?

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