Driving Trends in Information and Communication Technology — Markets and Technologies推荐.pdf

Driving Trends in Information and Communication Technology - Markets and Technologies Reda Reda I) and Harmen R. van As 2) J) Siemens AG Austria. Vienna. Austria; 2) Vienna University ofTechnology. Vienna. Austria Abstract This paper presents an analytical study ofthe development ofthe infonnation and communication technology (lCT) market from the marketing as weil as from a technological point ofview. The trends and their impact on the infonnation communication networks and consequently smart networks are discussed. Despite the CUTTent global economic disaster in almost every single industry, there are still a lot ofbusiness opportunities within the ICT industry, e.g., revenue-generating new features, applications and value-added services, soft-switches, plug-and-play network elements, network security, e- and m- business, micro-payment systems, personalized blue-tooth bandwidth applications and web-based add-ons. Moreover, there are still enonnous business chances to adapt, to optimize, and to exploit in the already existing network-infrastructures in Eastem Europe as weil as in the Third World. 1. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE EVOLUTION To understand the leT evolution and the corresponding market development and trends, we present a short survey of the hardware and software evolution during the last decade and a corresponding prognosis for the next decade. The physicist Niels Bohr once said: Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. The following examples display this fact very impressively. Tom Watson Sr., Chairman of IBM, said in 1943, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers and Irwin Dorros, V