The Future of Convergence

Think back to the PC revolution. For ten years before the PC came on the scene, we were programming on microprocessors. Microprocessors alone didn't make the PC market. What made the difference was that software was eventually put on top of the hardware, so that people could put applications on it. Suddenly you had the PC revolution.

Now fast-forward 25 years and we're at the same place, except that instead of having only the hardware in your PC box there is also the hardware of your connected devices. Increasingly, people hop from one connected device to another throughout their daily lives — BlackBerry, cell phone, work phone, PC, laptop, music and camera phone, TV, game console. The number of connected devices we use and carry increases every year, and more and more they are as much for our personal lives as for our professional lives. Family rooms are becoming more technically interesting than offices!

What if we did today the same thing that happened 25 years ago — wrap a layer of software, but this time around the hardware of connected devices, so that people could build applications on top of all this!!! The applications of such a platform are limitless, and will be centered as much on the user's quality of life as on business productivity. The enabling technologies and applications here are the next big thing for the convergence market and the IT industry as a whole.

Verizon's iobi platform is all about this. It will enable people to remotely control their content and events on any device; the content here could be calls, voice mails, files, notes, pictures, music, and video. For example, I'd like to know instantly anywhere in the world if my office calls any of my devices and be able to bring the call to where I am. I'd like to contact any individual or group in my business or personal circle at any time, using any device, and with the communication method of my choice. I'd like to have my media available to me at all times on any connected device capable of rendering them. I'd like to be notified of to take my prescription wherever I am. I'd like to have an "off" button to hold all forms of communications. Of course, most applications on such a platform will be created by various different companies —independent software vendors and so forth — which have intimate knowledge of a special vertical segment of life or business. Many of the applications will be as unpredictable as PC spreadsheets were back in the early '80s.