I see two major trends in the coming years. One, the abundance of bandwidth. Two, bio-informatics.

In the past 20 years, we felt the effects of Moore’s Law. Now, the rate of change in availability of bandwidth will be several orders of magnitude larger than the increase in rate of change of transistors in a piece of silicon. Both these effects together with the Internet (nothing but a set of protocols and services), Internet appliances (providing easy and inexpensive access) and new software (browsers, Java, XML, etc, that enable a new class of applications) will have a profound impact on the future. It is like life before electricity and after electricity.

The basics of economics have not changed even in today’s e-world. The three fundamental entities are value creation, value transportation and value consumption. Anything which is of "value", but not physical, may be converted into "digits". This digital value can be transported via the Internet to anywhere in "zero time", making "distance zero". At the other end, digits are reconverted back into value for which some one will pay. Software and IT-enabled services are two examples of this paradigm. There are many other instances of value that can be digitized. What else is software? Music, animation, textile patterns, consultancy, remote management of IT resources, remote testing and monitoring, tele-medicine, legal research...it’s a long list.

I see the biggest opportunity for India is in creating "digital value" for the world in which software will be a small subset.

Bio-informatics, which allows the use of informatics to derive value from biological data, will be another opportunity for India. It uses IT infrastructure being built now, and gives an enormous edge.

Finally, I believe that a "universal wireless service" is in the offing this year. This would allow the use of current cell phones (and new data phones) and bring a new meaning to mobility. Such a service will allow the same phone to be used on the local PABX inside the building, and connect to wired network phones and wireless phones in an intelligent manner automatically, saving consumers money and providing flexibility.

Dr Sridhar Mitta, an IT industry veteran and one of India’s most respected technologists, is with e4e Labs India

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