Several Gartner analysts took the stage at the annual Gartner Symposium ITxpo conference, held in San Diego this week, touting the dramatic changes expected in the near future as the world becomes more and more connected through wireless technology.
Gartner Fellow Tom Austin told the audience, consisting mainly of CIOs and other top-level executives, that new technologies will make wireless connectivity so ubiquitous that in the next few years everyone will be connected to a high-speed wireless network.
Among the new technologies Austin is watching: Ultra-wideband, a high-speed but short-range wireless technology. As Ultra-wideband become adopted, manufacturers of RFID equipment will be able to cut the cost of RFID transceivers to the point where every chip can have RF capability, Austin said.
Austin is also watching the move toward adopting 802.16 wireless, also known as WiMAX, a point-to-multipoint broadband wireless access standard which allows data rates of up to 70Mb/s at a range of up to 30 miles.
'That is the technology that can tie wireless networks together,' he said. 'You won't be connected to a server, but to a self-organising network.'
That self-organising network will depend on the building of sensor networks everywhere, resulting in the need for a complete shift in software architecture to what Austin called a 'terra-architecture' that can scale in real time. 'Such a network will be common in five years, and everywhere in 10 years,' he said.
Another Gartner Fellow, Andy Kyte, then took the stage to discuss some of the privacy issues related to widespread wireless connectivity, especially as people eventually become connected to networks that are 'always watching, always recording.'
Such privacy concerns are already here, with the typical person being video-taped hundreds of times a day and tracked every time they use a mobile phone, with all that data being stored and never deleted, Kyte said. 'Smile. You're on camera,' he said.
While privacy used to be thought of as question of being anonymous and obscure, that is no longer the case, said Kyte. 'Privacy as obscurity isn't being completely eliminated. ... [But] the battle is about who gets to use my data and for what purposes,' he said.
As an example, he cited the government's Do Not Call registry. 'It's not about secrecy or anonymity,' he said. 'It's about controlling who gets access to information.'
As people start to form connected communities, some of which can pop up overnight in response to events such as environmental issues, it will become necessary for companies to form bonds of trust with such communities and to make sure to never break that trust, Kyte said.
Such communities are based on people-based networks, consisting of myriads micro-transactions in which no individual transaction is significant, but which taken as a whole are significant, he said. 'If you can, try to be their trusted advisor,' he said. 'If not, try to influence their trusted advisor. Trust rules.'
With always-connected wireless technologies, the perfect recall of micro-transactions will also revolutionise marketing by allowing mining of data from such transactions to predict future patterns, said the next speaker, Mark Raskino, research vice president at Gartner.
Instead of thinking about the most recent interaction, companies will start to have the tools to predict what customers will do next, said Raskino. This is a considerable advance from the old marketing rule that 50 percent of advertising works, but we just don't know which 50 percent. 'That rule will not be valid 10 years from now,' he said.
Customers will initially fear such predictive capabilities, Raskino said.
However, privacy as anonymity is disappearing. Customers will be aware of how data is used and will demand that the data is used to offer the best services. Some will demand that such data will not be used at all. 'Customers will react, and demand more control of data,' he said.
Another change to come from being always connected is that workers will be encouraged to work outside of a centralised office, a move that can save companies US$10,000 or more per year in office costs, Raskino said. Instead, they will work in home offices, Starbucks, McDonalds or on flights to Dallas, for example.
That capability is already available, but not widely used because of social inertia, Raskino said. It will require new ways for companies to connect employees. As an example, he cited Jet Blue, which has set up home-based call centers. 'If there's money to be saved, it will overcome inertia,' he said.
The next step will be to connect freelance workers into what Raskino called 'Hollywood-style projects' under which they come together over a network to work on a project, only to disperse after the project is finished. 'One-thousand part-timers may be of more use than 100 full-time workers,' he said.
Raskino told the audience they need to find ways to capitalise on connected customers and connected employees. 'Seek to take advantage of micro-transactions,' he said. 'Get more control.'
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