"The Future Internet"

The May 2011 Future Internet Report is from the UK Future Internet Strategy Group.  If you try to visit the website it may not load because ironically enough, it is currently inaccessible.  The report outlines a 20 year strategy for the UK to attract technology businesses to the UK.

To summarize the report talks about the direction communication is heading.  It introduces the concept of "The Internet of People and Things".   It allows for the connection of previously unconnected services and businesses to allow businesses to put together right combination of services together for a customer.  These services will also be able to be customized to an "incredible degree".

It then discusses elements needed to support the "new internet".  One of the first hurdles is the physical number of connected devices.  The current IPv4 standard provides a limited number of IP addresses.  The shift to IPv6 will provide a seemingly infinite amount of addresses to support the massive growth in connected devices.  It goes on to say that the cloud will enable a new style of converged services.  The cloud will allow user and business data to be available anywhere at anytime.  With the cloud users will have the capability to be in control of their data at any time (for example giving and withdrawing consent).

Cloud services could be "aggregated together in any number of ways by a ‘broker’, to provide the end user with contextually aware applications and decision support services".

I agree with the reports prediction and recommendation of converged services.  With more an more enabled devices and services it has become increasingly hard for me to maintain my many separate online identities.  One online service may have one feature I need but not another.  I could very easily have 100 online accounts to accomplish a myriad of tasks.

2011 UK Future Internet Report

The shift to converged services will provide more choices in service provision allowing a more cost efficient integration of services and produce highly capable and competitive businesses.  The cost efficient and connected services will in turn allow for increased profits and lower end-user costs.  

Our class is even related to converged services.  Later this semester we will be using a software API called PhoneGap.  It acts as a broker to create multiple versions of native applications based on one source of data.