Is There Another Rush To Deploy Infrastructure In Our Future?

I'm not so sure. The reason we experienced the crazy growth rates of years gone by was the rush to deploy infrastructure.

You have to think back to the minicomputer phase to understand my argument. Until that point, computing power meant special rooms with air conditioners cooling down large, expensive mainframes.

The dawn of the minicomputer and its ability to put computing power in place at a lower cost spawned rapid deployment in companies that had never before thought about giving that power to large numbers of workers.

The result was that Digital Equipment, Prime Computer, Apollo, Wang and others were born and had lots of success,at least for a while.

Then along came the personal computer, and the rush to put a PC on every desktop came about. It was Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect that presented a reason for deploying the desktops, but again, it was a desire to put infrastructure in place that drove this industry.

The PC, of course, was followed by the LAN. In this phase, Novell's NetWare and,I would argue,the HP LaserJet perpetuated the need to share output devices and helped generate the next wave of infrastructure deployment.

After the LAN we had the WAN and client/server computing. The ability to instantly move data from one company location to another proved a powerful reason to rapidly build out the network. E-mail was one of the many applications that gave rise to the desire to do so.

Then came the World Wide Web, or the Internet. It started slowly at first and was largely unreliable. Remember when you would send an e-mail to recipients outside of your organization and then had to call them to see if they received it? I certainly do. And I can also recall sending e-mails that took hours to route themselves to the individual. Today we take for granted that we can send an e-mail and it will arrive within seconds, and if it doesn't, we're notified that it didn't get through.

'If you buy my argument that every period of rapid growth has been the result of a need to deploy infrastructure to take advantage of some data-transfer need, what is on the horizon that might spark such a runup, if anything?'

Again, all this drove a rapid deployment of infrastructure.

It got downright crazy after the invention of Mosaic and the Netscape browser. Then, it wasn't just about sending data and automation; it was about new business models,and you know the rest of the story.

If you buy my argument that every period of rapid growth has been the result of a need to deploy infrastructure to take advantage of some data-transfer need, what is on the horizon that might spark such a runup, if anything? On-demand computing or utility-based computing would suggest less deployment of infrastructure and more centralization of whatever is needed, so that doesn't look promising as a catalyst.

I'm no better at predicting the future than you, but when I think about this, I keep coming back to wireless networks.

Wireless networks are still nowhere near being ubiquitous or dependable. No wireless network,voice or otherwise,works perfectly everywhere. More hot spots are popping up all the time, but I can't hop from one to the other as I drive down

the road.

There is nothing driving a need to put wireless data in everyone's hands just yet. When there is, we will see another rush to deploy infrastructure and a rapid growth rate in the market.

Make something happen. I can be reached at (516) 562-7812 or via e-mail at [email protected].