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The Democratizing Power of the Web
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One of the most interesting trends to watch in 2007 is the continued democratizing power of the Web. You can see it everywhere. One of America's finest institutions of learning, Yale University, is posting its curriculum online for anyone to freely access. Education, broadly distributed, for free. It's great for our collective global intelligence. And Yale is not the only one — Stanford University, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, and others are participating in the Google Library Project to provide the entirety of their library's contents to everyone, everywhere via the Web. Whether or not you are interested in online education, what's really happening here is that these universities are reaching new "audiences" — students and academics in this case. Who's going to take these courses? Those who couldn't afford to attend, or are located in far regions of the globe, or maybe just didn't have the grades. Either way, what's important is that the universities aren't cannibalizing their existing student population, but expanding it (and their reputations) — to billions of people through the Internet. What does this have to do with business? Everything. While businesses will benefit from a more educated global population, the real story here is one of technology. This is just one more example of how the Web — access to it, pervasive use, and the growing number of applications, devices, and people participating on it — is changing our lives, forever. The broad access to an Ivy League education, for free, is compelling. But what's significant is that the barrier to entry is evaporating, for the better. Falling Barriers, Changing Opportunities
The fundamental business model has changed. Remember the days of buying software from a retail store, or from a sales representative? Now, software is available everywhere for free — it's the service, security, upgrades, maintenance and support at the center of the point of purchase. Keeping your business running at all times so you can deliver to customers is the point of value. The barriers to creating a new business or service running on the Web are incredibly low, almost zero. All anyone needs is a laptop and a network connection to start a business. It's changing the landscape of business and the trend will continue as far as we can see. Free software, free education. What's next? Free hardware? Yes. It's already starting to happen. Telecommunications carriers make very little, in fact many of them lose money, on the sale of each new phone. Why? They are focused on selling valuable services and using the Internet for the software upgrades — all while giving the hardware (the phone itself) away for free. Ultimately, this consumer device trend will make its way to datacenter technologies as well. Helping you, our customers and partners, deliver better, more efficient services to your own customers over the Web is where Sun is focused. It's also where I see more and more nascent companies entering the market, some delivering really interesting new services to consumers and businesses alike. Not all will become wildly successful. But those that use the democratizing power of the Internet wisely — to capture new audiences and new market opportunities — will thrive. So, what will you do differently in 2007? And how can we help? Jonathan Schwartz | |||||||||||
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