As we look back over the past year, I thought it will be a good idea to summarise some of the key ideas that I have talked about: India and the Internet, Enterprise Software (especially for small and medium enterprises in emerging markets like India) and Entrepreneurship. There are, in my view, inter-linked. India’s future lies with entrepreneurs who can leverage the Internet and Software to carve out a niche in global markets. This means thinking globally (and beyond IT services), building products, creating brands.
I have classified the articles I have written over the past year into 10 themes.
1. Consider the trends in computers, communications and software as an aggregate. Together, they are helping define the next Internet – a Global Technology Grid, providing pervasive connectivity and a real-time infrastructure.
- The New Internet: A new Internet is being built – an Internet that is helping glue together great progress in computing, communications and software. (May 28, 2001)
- Envisioning the Future: IT and the Internet, Low-cost Computing and Communications, Business Process Re-engineering, Software as a Utility, Services Shift, Emerging Markets (April 16, 2001)
- Technology Themes: To think through the impact going ahead, it is useful to look at some themes (Embedded Internet, Innovation, eBusiness, Services) brought about by these technologies. No single step may be revolutionary, but taken together their implications are. (March 5, 2001)
- Opportunities in Tomorrow’s World: “The Intelligent Enterprise” and “Connected People” are the two themes for the world of tomorrow. (November 29, 2000)
- TechnoWonders of the Modern World: My choices: Computer, Internet, Email, Cellphone, Cable TV, Fibre Optics and Streaming. (December 20, 2000)
- Changing Times: Life has changed a lot in India in the past decade. Perhaps the biggest changes have been due to the compression of time and space – “the death of distance”. The speed of communications, the velocity of life, the frequency of interactions – all have gone up. At the heart of this has been the increasing penetration of technology and the opening up of the Indian economy. (July 23, 2001)
2. The Real Internet Revolution lies ahead. This one is going to be focused not as much on what we can do as consumers, but the efficiencies enterprises can bring out in interactions between them. The real benefit on the Internet in being able to cut communications and transactions costs will now be evident.
- The Intelligent Enterprise: Integrating ERP, SCM and EIP: The Internet can make a difference to an enterprise and its communities – customers, employees and suppliers. (January 3, 2001)
- Business to e-Business: 10 Transformations: Manufacturing Economy to Information Economy, Mass Production to Mass Customisation, Vertical Integration to Virtual Integration, Internal Teams to Outsourcing, Conversation to Conference, Request-Reply to Publish-Subscribe, Client-Server to Peer-to-Peer, Going to Work to Doing Work, Hierarchy to Business Processes, Products to Services (January 15, 2001)
- Harnessing Information: Information naturally resides in silos. In memories, in notebooks, in writing pads, in diaries, in computer files, in email folders, in the RAM of cellphones. Information, like dust particles, naturally scatters. And just like it is impossible to aggregate the dust particles again, so too it is with information. We may be in the Information Economy, but it is still the Dark Ages. In both our personal and corporate lives, the amount of information around us has increased exponentially. What can be done to manage and harness information better? (October 22, 2001)
3. The focus now is on the Holy Grail of business: the Real-Time Enterprise. This enterprise is event-driven, information-intensive and extended to include suppliers, customers and employees. Data will need to be entered just once, and it will be available across the extended enterprise immediately.
- The Intelligent, Real-Time Enterprise: The New Enterprise thus needs to be both electronic and extended: electronic, because it has to move information in the fastest possible manner among its employees, suppliers, partners and customers; and extended, because it has to work with the other enterprises as though they were one, single enterprise. (June 12, 2001)
