Ten Tech Promises That Will Never Be Fulfilled

Here are our top 10 technology myths and our analysis on what solution providers should be doing about them:

1. The Paperless Office
Tag line: Remember carbon paper?

Myth: E-mail, instant messaging, digital signatures and other electronic technologies will rid the office of paper files and copiers.
Reality: E-mail generated more paper as people made copies for their files. In fact, the FBI still works this way, as do many legal offices.
Fallout: Copiers and file cabinets are still the norm, though most businesses don't know from carbon paper anymore, so there is some hope. Still, businesses do more printing now than ever before, and that trend isn't changing anytime soon.

2. IP/telephony
Tag line: Network your phone!
Myth: Get rid of that expensive PBX and connect all your telephones on your corporate Ethernet network. Then you'll only have one infrastructure to manage and maintain.
Reality: IP phones aren't that easy to deploy. You have to beef up the quality of service on various network switches and routers, and you may need to retrain your data-center staff to understand telco quality vs. network quality.
Fallout: While Cisco and others are briskly selling IP phones, getting all the infrastructure and staff up to par may take a few more years.

3. Desktop videoconferencing
Tag line: Live video to your desktop!
Myth: The Internet, IP and H.323 protocols and cheap Webcams will bring about a new era in desktop-videoconferencing applications.
Reality: While JenniCam and others have made live video feeds popular, the more mundane office communications,at least between people fully clothed,have lagged behind. H.323 is a rat's nest of complicated and confusing protocols, and standards aren't quite as interoperable as they could be. IP networks aren't always up to the task of delivering full-motion video without hogging all of the network bandwidth.
Fallout: Some interesting products and applications have come from all this work, nonetheless, including low-priced video servers that can be used to distribute desktop videos, Web-based videoconferencing/applications-sharing and improvements to multicast IP applications.

4. Client-side Java
Tag line: Write once, debug everywhere.
Myth: Java will revolutionize the software-development industry by providing a standard programming language that will run on numerous desktop OSs.
Reality: Subtle differences in Java runtimes and implementations make this almost impossible. Helping to confound matters is that Java was caught in the crossfire between Sun and Microsoft over which company would control its destiny.
Fallout: Some good has come of the whole Java mess, and from an unsuspected direction: the server. Java servlets, small pieces of code that run on top of various server-based processors, have taken off and spawned an entire new industry of Web services and standards.

5. Unified messaging
Tag line: Faxes in your e-mail inbox!
Myth: Workers will soon be able to use a single inbox to sort through all their communications needs, including e-mail, faxes, voice messages and files.
Reality: There are inboxes galore littering the computing landscape: Most of us have multiple e-mail, voicemail and fax addresses that accumulate messages quickly. Trying to sort out these different data types in a single location or service isn't as easy as once thought.
Fallout: Well, we do have services such as jFax, eFax and other Web-based fax offerings that came from these efforts, which are popular, effective and useful, especially as the number of junk faxes continues to climb.

6. Internet-based payments
Tag line: Sending money has never been easier.
Myth: Paying for goods over the Internet is fraught with problems because of the exposure to big, bad hackers and crackers.
Reality: This is one of those myths that actually works the other way. There is plenty of technology that can solve this problem, and people are buying stuff over the Internet to the tune of many billions of dollars a year. And the reality is that most Web-based attacks are focused on the content or gaining control of the servers themselves, not intercepting individual transactions.
Fallout: eBay now owns PayPal, which has become the preeminent Internet-based payment provider and has largely unified a fractious and confused industry overnight.

7. Firewalls
Tag line: Protect and serve.
Myth: Any corporation with any sense whatsoever will protect its network resources with a firewall.
Reality: Most firewalls don't protect everything and don't operate perfectly. Many have holes that allow all sorts of mischief into the average network. Even without these holes, the firewalls can be easily circumvented with some very easy tricks, such as proxy servers or hacked trusted accounts.
Fallout: Better intrusion-detection devices have come to market, and better sharing of attack profiles and techniques that can compromise proxy servers and the like are now available.

8. Windows server security

Tag line: Just as secure as Unix.
Myth: Microsoft will tighten down the hatches, patches and cracks to make Windows servers as safe and secure for corporations as any other OS.
Reality: Windows servers running Microsoft applications have so many security loopholes that exploits are legion, frequent and well-publicized.
Fallout: The software community can thank this myth for generating an active industry that keeps track of patches and fixes, to be sure.

9. Desktop Linux
Tag line: Better Windows than Windows,cheaper and fun, too!
Myth: Linux for the masses, running on your average Intel desktop PC with all the applications that you ever could use, just as long as they don't come from Redmond.
Reality: Silly rabbit, Linux is for servers, not desktops. Getting the right drivers, getting an operating system installed and a graphical interface running, and getting Linux to behave isn't for the faint of heart.
Fallout: The Linuxes are getting better at installing themselves, and some corporations have begun to standardize on them for desktops under certain limited circumstances.

10. Secure e-mail
Tag line: When you absolutely need privacy in your communications.
Myth: E-mail gets transmitted in clear text around the Internet, but it can easily be encrypted to keep prying eyes from reading messages between parties.
Reality: The trouble is that doing encryption ain't easy. Cryptographic solutions require all sorts of heavy lifting, and getting two e-mail systems to interoperate under these circumstances is more a matter of luck than skill.
Fallout: For the most part, secure e-mail is still the pits and still the province of a few %FCbertechies. But we do have encryption creeping into more and more products: Witness Groove and PKZIP are two examples that include this feature. And e-mail-encryption service providers are beginning to get the ease-of-use message as they deploy their products.