A business oriented broadband application platform

The authors examine socio-economic trends and their impact on future business applications with respect to requirements to communication and computing platforms. These requirements have to be fulfilled by technical developments in the coming years. The most important socio-economic trends are the globalisation of markets, the decentralisation of urban functions and the increased importance of environmental aspects. The first two trends entail increased travel activity, whereas the third trend calls for less travel activity. From this inconsistency they conclude that there is a market demand for the support of collaboration of widely distributed workgroups. Technical developments will deliver the means for this, most notably networks for mass transport of bits and video conferencing technology. They elaborate on the socio-economic trends, from which we will derive specific technological requirements. They also describe an envisioned broadband application platform with which these requirements can be met