Web services promise to integrate businesses, connect all kinds of devices, and rally the computer industry around standards. You’ve heard the hype — here’s what the hubbub’s all about.
The bread and butter of many companies is service: offering a unique and valuable expertise or resource to others. Indeed, in the past six or seven years, the Internet has enabled many traditional and new service companies to reap even greater profits from their know-how. Examples are everywhere: credit card authorization (through services like PayPal and c2it) is now available to any one; online auctions linking buyer and seller are commonplace; any bank worth its salt offers Web-based banking to its customers; and online travel brokers and “e-tickets” have literally recasted an entire industry — much to the dismay of your local travel agent.
With widespread Internet access, those services remained much the same, but reach expanded. Availability brought users, users drove usage, and usage, of course, drove profit. (Yes, there were many failures, but just look at eBay’s revenues and profits as an example of what can be done.) Usage has also driven change. Like the saying, “A rising tide lifts all boats,” Internet usage and adoption has forced all of us to think and act and conduct business differently. Even if your product is “tangible” (a car, a piece of software, consumer credit, or genomic data), the phenomena of 24/7, ubiquitous, on-demand service has likely changed your business, too. Or is. Or will — no doubt about that. There’s no going back to the days before the Internet boom. In fact, more and more devices get connected to the Internet every day. Connectivity is becoming…
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