Return of the bright idea
- Posted:
- 17:05 16 Mar 2004
Old IT concepts never die, they just
get rebranded. Danny Bradbury looks at seven technologies that were
hyped as the next big thing but fell by the wayside and asks if
there is a possibility of a comeback
There is nothing quite as cyclical as the IT industry. New concepts
are overhyped and sink into what industry analyst Gartner Group
calls the "trough of disillusionment". From there they either gain
gradual acceptance, are repackaged as new, improved versions, or
are simply abandoned. Here are seven also-ran concepts from the
past decade that some hope may yet make it.
Push technology
What was it?
Push technology was designed to deliver content to networked
devices from a central server. Initially targeted at
consumer-focused content such as news and ticker symbols, push
systems would deliver content based on end-user subscriptions,
which was then displayed in various forms on a PC (including
multimedia screen savers).
As the technology developed, companies hoped to use it for systems
management, pushing software updates and patches to the
client.
What happened to it?
Companies realised it was easier to bring Mohammed to the mountain.
Why force updates on end-users who may not need them? And why
subscribe to a system that sends you information using special
software when you can sign up for an e-mail newsletter instead?
Instead, users would instruct their software to go and grab updates
when necessary.
Chances of making a comeback?
Limited. Push technology is still around in some system management
applications, but for human-readable content it is all but dead.
Instead, with the evolution of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) as
the foundation for web logging and content syndication online, pull
technology is gaining ground and promises to be the next big
revolution on the web.
RSS is XML-based and is accessible using newsreader software that
will make the web as we know it less relevant. RSS users can simply
point software such as RSS Bandit at an RSS feed listed as a URL
and get their syndicated content dropped into the software for
later consumption.
ASP
What was it?
Like push technology the application service provider model was
going to revolutionise the web, especially for small businesses
that could not afford expensive hardware and software purchases.
Companies would be able to rent software applications online and
their data would be held on the same remotely managed servers,
leaving them with an easily manageable monthly fixed fee.
What happened to it?
The dotcom industry. Inexperienced companies tried to cash in on
the ASP revolution, leading to poor service levels, patchy support
and fly-by-night operations.
Small businesses were also worried about the security implications
of hosting their data off-site. The limited customisation options
in some of the software also made it less relevant to potential
customers. Interest dropped off and projects were canned. When the
IT recession hit, the game was up.
Chances of making a comeback?
Customer relationship management suppliers are trumpeting the ASP
model again with companies such as SalesForce.com, Siebel and
Microsoft all offering CRM solutions for online rental for small
and medium-sized firms. BT offers a range of hosted solutions
(including Siebel's) and many large suppliers are relying on their
industry reputations to rebuild customer confidence in the
model.
But many of the old problems still exist. We asked a UK
spokesperson for Netsuite, an Oracle-backed CRM ASP about service
level agreements and he could not tell us anything because
everything for UK customers is hosted in the US office.
Unified communications
What was it?
Would it not be useful to get your voicemail, e-mail and faxes on
your PC so you could leaf through all your communications wherever
you were, via the internet? That was the idea behind the unified
communications concept. Using soft PBX technology, phone calls
would be routed to a server and recorded before being made
available to the end-user. Communications would be more intuitive
and no-one would ever lose a fax again.
What happened to it?
The convergence of telecoms and IP was vital to this concept's
success. It did not happen as quickly as it was meant to and too
many corporate telephony and computer networks remained separate,
says Mark Blowers, senior research analyst at Butler Group. Without
the underlying platform in place, unified communications was a
non-starter.
Chances of making a comeback?
This one looks promising. Voice over IP is finally
catching on now that the carriers themselves have moved from
circuit-based systems to packet-based connections. With companies
such as Cisco selling IP phones, convergence is finally beginning
to happen.
Technologies such as the Session Initiation Protocol are making it
easier to merge different communication streams together on
packet-based networks and, over the next five years, companies will
find it easier to make the leap.
In the meantime, instant messaging has appeared and any unified
communications product worth its salt will need to take advantage
of this.
Public key infrastructures
What was it?
PKIs are frameworks for the distribution and use of
digital certificates. Users retain a private cryptographic key and
distribute a public one. Like a digital wax seal, using one with
the other enables users to prove that they created a document, and
to verify that it has not been tampered with. Certification
authorities such as Verisign distribute certificates and ensure
lost or expired ones are revoked.
What happened to it?
Although security geeks understood it, the interface for PKI was
not intuitive enough for the average user, says Jay Heiser, chief
analyst at security services firm TruSecure. Putting certificates
onto smartcards is an alternative, but smartcards and readers are
expensive, making them a niche medium and not suitable for the
average e-commerce consumer.
Chances of making a comeback?
PKI is unlikely to make a huge comeback overnight for three
reasons. First, the complex interface problems have not been
resolved. Second, the problem of verification remains - commercial
services do not want to make it too difficult to verify a
customer's identity when signing them up because customers will
stop using them, says Heiser.
Finally, commercial services such as online book and clothing
retailers mostly consider passwords and credit card security codes
to be secure enough for their purposes, he says.
Network computing
What was it?
The network computer was already an old concept when it was
introduced in the mid-1990s. Holding data centrally on a monolithic
server and manipulating it centrally was what computing had been
based on since the beginning. But Sun introduced a new twist with
Java, which it hoped would provide downloadable software components
that could be run on the client.
In this way, the network computer would provide an alternative to
fat Windows applications, in which 95% of the software's
functionality sat on the client but was never used. In the new
model, a network computer would only download the wordcount or
picture drawing components of the word processor when they were
accessed. The result? Cheaper desktop machines with fewer hardware
requirements, lower power drain and a reduced cost of
ownership.
What happened to it?
Customers liked their PCs too much. Unless an employee is
working in a very structured way (such as a data entry clerk) users
needed the additional functionality. So companies took the best
part of the network computing model - the browser - and ran it on a
fat client.
Sun and IBM tried to make a Java-based thin-client operating system
work in the mid- to late-1990s but it flopped. Instead, companies
such as Microsoft and Citrix created Windows-based thin client
systems that accessed central server-based applications.
Chances of making a comeback?
Over the next few years the number of thin-client desktops
will grow to 4%, says Butler Group analyst John Holden. Although
that is a lot of clients, it is still a small chunk of the market.
There is hope for the thin-client market in mobile computing, as
smartphones become more prevalent and their small memory footprints
require software components to be downloaded piecemeal. This is one
area that Sun Microsystems is relying on to drive the thin-client
computing model forward.
3G
What was it?
Third generation mobile networks were going to
revolutionise mobile communications. Smartphones and high-bandwidth
devices would enable PC-quality web surfing, videoconferencing and
ubiquitous computing where people were always connected, wherever
they were.
What happened to it?
A round of expensive licence auctions put mobile network
operators on the spot. To miss the 3G goldrush would have been
commercial suicide, but if they wanted to licence the bandwidth
they had to pay. Technical challenges also made 3G roll-outs
difficult.
Julie Ramage, senior analyst at telecoms watcher Analysys Research,
used to monitor estimated 3G roll-out dates. "Suppliers kept
putting them back. Then most operators stopped reporting any
advertised launch dates," she says. The services that have been
launched have been plagued by disappointing handsets with poor
battery life, she adds.
Chances of making a comeback?
It will happen. Orange plans its UK 3G roll-out later in
the year and Vodafone is providing some services now. But operators
face a long wait. Analysts expect 3G revenue to lag behind 2G (GSM)
until 2007, and it will not pull ahead of 2.5G (GPRS)-based revenue
until 2008. Increasing the average revenue per user relies on
value-added digital services, rather than commodity airtime, so the
time lag is going to hit the mobile operators hard.
Videoconferencing
What was it?
Videoconferencing was meant to make business travel less necessary,
enabling people to conduct meetings from the office and reduce both
commute and travel times. Originally restricted to roll-around
units using several ISDN lines strung together for
broadcast-quality signals, videoconferencing was a boardroom
phenomenon. As PC power and internet connection speeds increased,
the idea of desktop videoconferencing emerged.
What happened to it?
A mixture of high prices, poor interfaces, inadequate
quality and technological glitches conspired against
videoconferencing. Martin Langham, practice leader for content
management and collaboration at Bloor Research, says companies
found it difficult to keep all the ISDN lines operational when
using expensive boardroom systems. Meanwhile, on the desktop, image
quality rarely reached the necessary 24-30 frames per second.
Audio/videoconferencing remains difficult to set up, even today,
thanks to corporate firewalls and unintuitive interfaces.
Chances of making a comeback?
Things are improving. Desktop cameras from companies such
as Apple and Polycom use better lenses with autofocus and handle
image processing in hardware. Instant messenger software is making
it easier to get past the corporate firewall and the prospects for
inexpensive videoconferencing of reasonable quality are
improving.
