Future Technology
Broadband
Whilst the Internet has enjoyed the distinction of being the fastest growing medium in history, it has been mostly a narrow band medium. This has led to limitations in the quality and breadth of services that can be offered. Broadband will be the solution to a lot of these issues. Broadband refers to communications media with much greater data transfer rates (typically 50 times the speed of the existing 56k modem or ISDN line). There are various broadband options currently under consideration for the Irish market:
- ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line)
- Cable Internet
- Satellite
- Wireless
Broadband is of significance to all businesses but large business already has solutions open to it in the form of leased lines and frame relay. All of the options listed above are suitable for small business and have various advantages and disadvantages including speed issues, cost issues, and currently, regulatory and availability issues. In the next few years, the regulatory and availability issues are likely to be ironed out as is the big issue of Local Loop Unbundling i.e. allowing more than one Telecoms Company to control the lines within an exchange. When this issue has been resolved, all Telecoms companies will be able to compete on an equal footing and offer much cheaper solutions to their customers.
Web Services
Simply put, a Web service is an application that exposes a programmatic interface using standard, Internet-friendly protocols. This technology uses XML (Extensible Markup Language) which is a descendant of HTML and is commonly referred to as .NET (dotnet). This is a cross language and cross platform technology that allows services written in one language on one platform to be used in applications written in an entirely different language on an entirely different platform. An example of a web service is where organisations can send electronic purchase orders to suppliers and receive electronic invoices, without human intervention. Doing E-Business with Web services means a low barrier to entry because Web services can be added to existing applications running on any platform without changing legacy code. Continental Airlines exposes flight schedules and status Web services for travel Web sites and agencies to use in their applications. EarthConnect.net is an example of a live, commercial Web service that provides financial information. EarthConnect’s Web services provide delayed and real-time stock quotes using .NET XML Web services.
Web services will enable application-to-application e-marketplace interaction, removing the inefficiencies of human intervention.
The future for web services is favourable and they are another scenario that greatly benefits SMEs by letting them, for example, focus on core competencies and sell their services as an add-on to larger commercial applications or web services.
M-Commerce
M-Commerce or Mobile Commerce refers to the use of wireless devices such as next generation mobile phones and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) as the media for conducting E-Business. It has been predicted that one day, wireless E-Business will surpass non-wireless E-Business as the most prevalent method of conducting E-Commerce. For this to happen, however, a number of issues need to be ironed out including, the lack of a single mobile telecommunications standard; low wireless device penetration; high prices; erratic service and a lack of sufficient investment in third generation networks.
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