Where were you 15 years ago? Just starting out? An embryonic Young
Turk? Asking daddy for the car keys? If you were in technology,
you were witness to a string of unprecedented advances, each building
on the one before. Some were pure technology; others were applications.
Applications create stress; stress creates the need for products;
products increase the ability to handle volume and lower costs -
which brings on new applications. So before we look at my choices
for the top 15 products of the past 15 years, let's look at the
applications and technologies that set the stage.
Jump to Howard's 15 picks
The rise of e-mail
In 1981,
approximately 100 million e-mail messages were sent, compared with
about 130 billion first-class letters. This year an estimated one
trillion to two trillion e-mail messages will be sent. E-mail has
been growing at 100% per year for 15 years and in 1999 surpassed
first-class mail, which had been growing at less than 2% per year.
But more importantly, e-mail has changed the world. It was the first
computer application that everyone could, and did, use.
E-mail was the driver for all sorts of technology. With e-mail
came the need for attachments, which pushed the need for storage.
Back in 1986, some were debating the importance of word processing,
which turned out to be a trivial and silly application next to e-mail.
E-mail stressed the corporate networks, and cost justified the billions
that were invested.
The
emergence of voice mail
Before voice mail, the world
was abuzz with pink "While you were out" slips. Telephone
tag was not the exception but the rule. Voice mail was the first
new application of voice telephony in 75 years. It gave companies
a reason to upgrade their PBXs and let managers use the telephone
as a nonreal-time device. The PBX never fulfilled its promise as
an intercompany data-switching device, but it did start the process
of justifying telecommunications expense on a return-on-investment
basis. Voice mail also morphed into an application for telephone
companies, as users who had voice mail at work wanted the same functionality
at home.
LANs
Before 1984, the responsibility
for inside wiring in any company lay with the telephone company.
After 1984, companies took control of their destinies and began
to run their own internal networks.
Originally, LANs were justified because printers were expensive,
and it was possible to share the cost by connecting several users
together. Today, printers are cheaper than water, and LANs don't
even have to be cost-justified anymore.
Structured building wiring was a capital expense that made all
the applications possible. It simplified management, and its success
triggered even more applications, which overloaded the early LANs
until entire departments were dedicated to delivering a guaranteed
service level. The need for an intelligent approach made users cognizant
of the need to build along some common set of standards. So LANs
and structured wiring were pushed by corporate users' need to handle
larger files. This was the driver that made routing a reality.
Signaling System 7
Every
communications advance is, in effect, a microcosm of the worldwide
telecom network. Everything from the most rudimentary LAN to 3G
wireless networks has a need to diagnose problems, restore the network
and guarantee successful completion of an event. Signaling System 7 (SS7) is used to
send signaling information from exchange to exchange and to control
central office switching equipment from remote locations. Without
SS7, all those new Advanced Intelligent Network applications would
never work. What makes SS7 important is that it is a signaling and
control solution. Think of it as a platform that works. With the
growth in traffic came the need for a network control system - and
a byproduct of network control was interesting new applications
such as automatic identification of dialing.
Packet switching
Behind LANs, behind ATM, routers, switches and
the Internet, stands packet switching. More money has been made
from this technology than any other since the semiconductor. Packet
switching is really more than 40 years old, but we keep recreating
new applications. Today, we are talking about bringing broadband
services to 101 million homes - all based on the idea that we can
packetize transmission and switching at gigabits per second.
Protocols
Imagine the Tower
of Babel. People couldn't understand one another. Frustration reigned.
Without protocols, we would be in a similar situation.
What we used to have was a one-vendor environment (IBM) in which
we knew the products worked together, but were loath to introduce
any competing products because they might not work as well together
as that one-vendor environment. With protocols, multivendor environments
could flourish, which brought out new competitors, lowered costs
and fostered innovation.
The Top 15
These six applications and technologies were the catalyst for what
I consider the top 15 products of the past 15 years. Each product
has some common characteristics - each was the market leader, showed
innovation and was brilliant in its timing and appeal.
Forum
What do you think? Debate Anderson's choices.
15. Newbridge 3524 Channel Bank
Newbridge gave brains to the channel
bank, a formerly dumb piece of telecom equipment in the central
office that converted analog signals into digital to be carried
over higher-speed lines to other exchanges. In doing so, Newbridge
sparked the concept of the intelligent network.
14. Cisco 4500
Cisco didn't invent routing, but revisionist history
will give it all the credit. This product let LANs be segmented
and interconnected to WANs. Routing went from a cute little tactical
technology to a strategic one. Not every company needs routers,
but every company needs routing. Cisco took that simple fact and
built an empire.
13. Ciena MultiWave CoreDirector
This was the first commercial
product to split light, launching the entire optical market. Before
Ciena, wave division multiplexing was thought to be five years away
and then only experimental. But Sprint saw the need early on and
became the poster child for the rest of the industry.
12. 3Com network interface cards and bridges
3Com commercialized
bridges and at a price we all could afford, thereby creating plug-and-play
networking. Ethernet was a joint venture of Digital, Intel and Xerox,
but 3Com led the way.
11. Cascade 8000/9000 frame relay switches
Cascade was the first
player to make a cost-effective wide-area data switch for carriers.
This product brought carriers into the 21st century. Before this,
they couldn't even spell d-a-t-a. Frame relay was a market that
grew like kudzu; every year the market doubled, and the carriers
found the first common ground with their most sophisticated users.
10. Redback SMS 1000
The first product to exploit the opportunity
for subscriber management in DSL networks. This year, like last,
the market for DSL will be constrained by supply rather than demand.
The DSL networks that are succeeding are running on the Redback
1000.
9. Sonus Networks GSX9000 Open Services Switch
The first commercially
viable carrier-class replacement for a Class 4 switch exploiting
voice-over-IP technology. How the industry let Sonus sneak in and
garner the market is going to be a Harvard Business School case
for the next decade. Right product, right time.
8. Sun Java
The first open language that was extensible and independent
of an operating system. And to think Sun almost overlooked it. Many
of the innovative products in the industry started as quasi-skunk
works projects until somebody realized that, like Java, they solved
a real problem.
7. Ascend RAS 4000
Like working from home? Thank Ascend. This
product invented work-at-home; it let remote users dial in to their
companies and extend the corporate data network to their front porches.
6. Art Technology Group (ATG) Dynamo Applications
Server
These
guys invented personalization by building the first content Web
server that allowed for dynamic information serving based on a user
profile. All those "myWhatever" companies use this technology
today. The future of the Internet is personalization, and ATG built
it.
5. Microsoft Windows
Proved once and for all that stealing is
the best strategy. What Apple proposed, Microsoft now owns. But
what Windows did is give the rest of the developers a large target
to aim at. Those who built to OS/2 standards are now pushing up
daisies.
4. Palm Pilot
We are the Palm generation. This product made us
forget the Apple Newton and begin building the blueprint for wireless
information. It extended our contact and database files. Very infrequently
does the industry get the right product in the right form at the
right time. All the Handsprings and BlackBerries and other products
that will follow owe a debt of gratitude to the team from U.S. Robotics.
It created a revolution.
3. Nokia/Ericsson/Motorola cellphone
The service sucks, but you
will never give up this product. What you lose in quality you make
up for in flexibility. The cellphone revolutionized the world.
Even mighty Motorola underestimated demand but the product made
so much sense that it just plain took off.
2. Lancity cable modem
You will give up your first born before
you give back your cable modem. As addictive as cocaine.
1. Apple Macintosh
My Macintosh was my best friend. I loved it;
it loved me. It had anticipatory intelligence; it knew what I wanted
before I did. It understood me. There was this implicit contract
between my Macintosh and me: We would look out for each other. The
Macintosh was, without question, the single greatest product of
the past 15 years.
If you build it, they will come
Robert Moses was a builder of roads and bridges in the time of
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Moses truly had a black belt in spending
and was unafraid to overbuild.
Yet he found that every time he built a superhighway or massive
bridge, the traffic rose beyond even his optimistic projections.
The same is true with networks. Networks became necessary as we
added applications such as voice mail, e-mail and streaming media.
The applications clogged the networks, so we had to find solutions,
such as packet switching and protocols, which worked to increase
availability and reduce cost - which led to even more applications.
Every time we reached a roadblock, such as the need for network
control, we found solutions that made our networks more failsafe,
more vigorous. And we ain't seen nothin' yet.
This is the Network Century.
