There are predictions that e-business will keep the good times rolling - for at least another 20 years?
From his vantage point at chip giant Intel, Paul Otellini has seen a lot of changes in the computer industry over the past 26 years.
In a keynote address to the Internet World trade show in New York, Otellini not only catalogued the changes he's seen but also predicted a continued boom over the next 20 years as companies move to put their businesses online.
Central in the changing face of information technology as we exit the PC era and fully enter the Internet age is the change that businesses will have to make in the way they architect their IT infrastructure.
"It is shifting from increasing individual productivity to enterprise productivity and from personal empowerment to customer empowerment," Otellini said.
"The biggest change is who is accessing your data centre," he continued. "Customers and partners outside your firewall are accessing your data 24 hours a day, seven days a week on multiple devices."
Not surprisingly, Otellini, who is executive vice president of Intel's architecture group, presented a computing architecture for the coming generation that has Intel-based servers at its heart.
The basic infrastructure he demonstrated started with a strength of Intel's product line -- duel-processor Compaq servers on the front end to present Web pages to end users.
Such servers increasingly have caching and load-balancing functionality, Otellini pointed out. Middle-tier servers, where Web applications reside, sport up to eight Intel Pentium III Xeon processors in Otellini's architecture. These machines will increasingly take up data-archiving and batch-processing functions previously done by back-end database servers, he said. This migration will occur in order to move data closer to end users.
Enter Itanium
The back end of Otellini's e-commerce architecture consisted of the most speculative piece -- high-end servers equipped with Intel's forthcoming Itanium chips running ERP and database software. Speculative because Intel, which built its name by making microprocessors for PCs, is a relative newcomer in the server room.
The company faces challenges not only because Itanium has taken six years to develop but because it has been buffeted over the last six months by manufacturing-related chip shortages, problems with the 820 chip set and a recall of Intel's fastest Pentium III processor.
A key to Itanium's success will be the ability of software to take advantage of the processor's 64-bit addressing capabilities. To help ensure that such software is available, Intel has announced a partnership with Vignette and last week announced a similar alliance with Commerce One.
Looking ahead to a generation of e-commerce dominated by the Internet, Otellini said that companies will change the way they look at the world and alter the fundamental procedures for doing business. Companies must think globally and reconsider long-held beliefs, he said.
As an example of how this is already happening, Otellini pointed to an e-tailer in Turkey he spoke to recently. An officer at the company told Otellini that Turks, who have been bartering in markets for more than 4,000 years, have practically overnight embraced the idea of doing business online.
That's emblematic of the changes that await us all.
"Technology is never a substitute for your business strategy," Otellini said. "You can't abdicate ownership of your business model."
Interesting that Otellini sees e-business in terms of processors. There is no explanation why Itanium in particular is best for the job, or why even multi-processor systems are required.
Given that AUD150 gaming machines have been at 128 bit for years before Intel even ships a 64 bit CPU and that Transmetta are shipping 128 bit and working on 256 bit CPUs, what particular advantage does Intel bring to e-business? Their sole marketing leverage has been as the other half of "Wintel" and "IBM compatible".
McCright says "A key to Itanium's success will be the ability of software to take advantage of the processor's 64-bit addressing capabilities". Given Intel's failures with early Pentiums, motherboards and even their latest PIIIs, I would have thought that the key is to deliver a solid, working chip. By Intel's own admission, Itanium will probably not be any faster than the current 32 bit Pentium III.
I guess this is why Intel are proof of Otellini's phrase:
"Technology is never a substitute for your business strategy ... "