The Future Internet: Going Beyond Envelope's Edge

Industry leaders are working hard to identify and create the Internet of the future, and News Editor Rita Boland digs in with an examination of this virtual "ground breaking" in cyberspace in her article, "Upcoming Online Experiences," in this issue of SIGNAL Magazine. The piece is the first in a four-part SIGNAL semaphore series: The Future of the Internet. Kevin Orr, Cisco Corporation's vice president of U.S. Defense, envisions five key pieces of Web 3.0: mobile Internet, apps and business analytics, social networking, cloud computing and unified collaboration. Though these factors already play roles in today's Web environment, their expansion and growth will affect how individuals and organizations behave in the coming years. Diversified connections, Orr says, will drive the Web's future:

The Internet is going to become mobile. I think what's really interesting right now is we see more devices connected to the Internet than people.

Orr estimates that by 2013, more than 1 billion mobile devices will have access to the Internet. In that same year, mobile-device connections will surpass traditional access methods until they make up 90 percent of online interactions, he predicts. Another industry leader is Citrix, and its chief security strategist, Kurt Roemer, also sees trends for the future Internet. He believes it will be a highly immersive environment where Web 3.0 is more about lifestyle. However, rather than placing emphasis on devices of the future, he says the physical tools will fade in importance compared to Web services. The focus, he states, will be more on computing than the computers themselves. Accessing as much information as possible with as few clicks as possible will be a major part of Internet usage going forward, Roemer predicts. All these new features of the Internet put its users in more danger of exposing sensitive information, he states:

I really believe there are some fundamental changes needed in security.

Big companies aren't the only ones with plans. In the current development space, small, creative developers have more impact than ever on the next big thing. Are you one of those small companies? What are you doing that differentiates you from the competition? What's the next great idea? SIGNAL invites other companies to share their ideas.