The Falling Cost of Always-On

Commentary by Dave Lovekin

Since 2002 saw the dreams of a brave new Internet world fall in a cloud of its own hype, there has been a debate concerning the ‘next big thing’ that will impact the technology industry.

For many, that ‘thing’ was going to be a revolution in access to computing services. Referred to as ‘pervasive computing’, where computer interactions would occur between everything, everywhere and largely without the awareness of the mere human beings involved. There was much talk and speculation, but very little could be seen to be happening.

Today the idea of pervasive computing is now closer to reality but not in the form it was originally discussed after the dot-com bubble burst.

The drive in this direction has come from the large-scale adoption of new long battery-life, lightweight devices and wireless networks that can connect them to useful services.

Rather than a massively integrated network of small utility computers talking to each other and monitoring our refrigerator temperature on a toothbrush-based LCD display, the reality of pervasive computing has evolved as personal-access to personal-interest information from a personal, portable device.

To me the interesting aspect of this technology is that early adoption appears to be coming from the grass-roots. The end-user up. Starting with WiFi in Starbucks, the iPhone and 3G capabilities in smart mobile telephones, all of a sudden pervasive computing is a usable possibility. So where are the business applications?

Some might argue it is obvious that business is already using this technology, after all who is Research In Motion, and what is a Blackberry?

My argument however is that a Blackberry is an email enabled telephone that some might argue is not much different to having a traditional personal work-cubicle that can fit in your pocket. You use it for email (20 years old) and voice communications (120 years old).

You don’t use a blackberry to access innovative resources on the cloud. For that you are going to need an iPhone or one of the many ‘me-too’ brands that it has spawned.

This pervasive connectedness is not being exploited widely by businesses yet. Traditional software makers are slow to join the fray. An iPhone app that would let me connect to corporate servers and manage a factory run schedule from the shop floor, or analyze program budget impact of a specification change from the coffee shop is not just ‘cool’, it is the ability to overcome the fundamental tyranny of geography. It allows me to look at all my processes and ask, “If I didn’t have to do this here, could this process be more efficient?”

For example: If you are a contractor, your cash flow depends upon the ability to close jobs and charge for the delivery. How often does a job finish, leaving Accounts Receivable tied up in Work In Process while the project manager or supervisor tracks down the last travel expenses and materials receipts, probably by digging under the front seat of a pickup.

Wouldn’t it be so much more efficient if every receipt was scanned back to the office at the store before the materials even arrived on site, and that finished jobs could be closed out of WIP before a supervisor’s truck left the worksite.

I have a cheap ($100) Motorola Razr mobile phone that could potentially do that today.

Built in Digital Camera – Think Scanner

3G Messaging – Think Form submission

Built in Web Browser – Think access to the back office system.

This is possible now, and at a cost of ownership that was unimaginable in 2002.

Always-on technologies, cheap handheld devices, small ‘netbook’ computers and cloud enabled applications means that some processes you have operated for decades, could be done a lot faster and cheaper if you just considered, do you really have to do that here?

Now if they could solve the only remaining technical problem and just make a good portable-device display that my middle-age eyes could read comfortably, then I could get really excited about all this.