Help new app stand tall

Liquid bandwidth finally makes the leap from theory to killer platform enabler.

Since 1998, when Chunka Mui and Larry Downes penned their thought-provoking volume, Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance, industry analysts, venture capitalists and the media have been besieged by a host of old- and new-world companies claiming to have developed the business equivalent of the Fountain of Youth. These killer applications promise eternal business life by Web-enabling every customer contact and business process.

The time for hype is over. It is 2001, and customers have a better chance of finding the Fountain of Youth than actually having a killer app that lives up to its promise.

What went wrong? Mui and Downes were right-on with their assessment of the power of communications and the customer’s appetite for transformational applications that catapult their business operations to new levels of speed and efficiency. The fact that no killer applications have come to market in a meaningful or disruptive way indicates a missing ingredient is still needed to fully tip this industry into explosive growth.

What has been missing is a killer platform that enables these killer applications to become serious business drivers and empowers customers to seize opportunities at Internet speed. A killer platform is comprised of much more than just bandwidth and is customer-centric, rather than technology-focused. It is an enabling environment for the customer and its business applications, consisting of three tightly interwoven components:

• Vision—a clear focus on providing world-class service, and support capabilities and systems that permit customers to be served in the way best suited to their needs;
• Assets—a collection of core assets that extends the power of next-generation fiber networks and adds value to service offerings by creating new methods for infusing flexibility, scope and scale into a customer’s business model; and
• Execution—bandwidth so flexible and available that it can best be described as liquid—infinitely scalable, instantly provisionable, incrementally billable and independent of protocol.

This ability to provide abundant bandwidth and immediate provisioning makes bandwidth pourable anywhere, anytime and in any amount. It is the missing link that, up until now, has prevented a true killer platform from emerging.

For 10 years, customers have expressed frustration at having to buy more bandwidth than applications require—sometimes paying for at least a full month of service when they may only need a circuit for a few days. They are confused over which protocol—frame, ATM, IP—to use and whether to forklift their application to the latest topology or run multiple, parallel networks. Finally, they have missed important opportunities while waiting more than 100 days for a circuit to be installed. In his first journey to uncover the Fountain of Youth, Ponce de Leon discovered Florida in less time.

Now, with expansion of capacity made possible by the deployment of intelligent optical transport, and the reduction in provisioning time resulting from all-optical switching, liquid bandwidth will finally make the leap from theory to killer platform enabler. Think about the ability to buy only as much bandwidth as is needed—and only pay for the time it is used.

The next Internet frontier will be populated by full-motion video, CD-quality audio, three-dimensional imaging and other content-rich applications, which will require the combination of deep storage and high-bandwidth networks to consolidate previously unimaginable amounts of data for easy storage and retrieval by users. Top-of-mind for buyers of communications products and services, however, are not technological advances, but finding out how to radically improve speed to market and speed to delivery for their customers.

Customer-facing operational support systems can empower the customer and provide the capability to immediately track and customize applications to meet his business needs.

From streaming audio and video to telepresence and collaborative work environments, from true video-on-demand to HDTV over wireline, the killer applications that will forever change the way we live, work and play are being developed today. Ponce de Leon never found the Fountain of Youth, but he did discover several new worlds that yielded other treasures. By focusing on providing the proper platform to encourage and sustain well-developed killer applications, the opportunity is at hand to provide the tools that customers will use to unlock their own riches.

Ellenberger is president and CEO of Broadwing Inc., Austin, TX. Comments for publication should be sent to guest@comnews.com.