So What Does 2006 Offer a Fast Company

There is one thing for sure, it only seems like a short time since 2000 and now we are here over halfway through this decade. This decade has had some momentous times, such as 9/11, the tsunami and the war again terror! In the technology world we have seen the appearance of a range of hand-sized tools -- iPods, Blackberry, smart mobile phones, and more. And in the past few years we have also seen the uptake of broadband, removal of servers from businesses to server farms, and fully functional business software being made available as a service instead of as a product. This is how Inside Bay Area sees the development:

Software that's purchased and installed in your computer — or your company's server computers — is being replaced by software that resides on the Web and can be licensed from companies such as NetSuite of San Mateo. The idea wipes out the need to purchase and maintain expensive server hardware — a boost for many small- and medium-sized companies.

Then we have the convergence of phones, computers and access to the Internet. Because of VOIP we can now have only one network within an office:

Screedz - Journal - Why VOIP is Good for Small Business: "All that is then required for the small to medium business is a single broadband connection that can be delivered via Foxtel Cable, ADSL or for even larger businesses where fibre is available you may wish to obtain a 10MB connection for about $2,500 per annum which can successfully run both your computer network and your telephone converged network."

And what is that in your hand? A phone or a computer? Not too distant from now we can quite conceivably complete an order from my client's location on a computer/phone and have it interact with the NetSuite server and provide real-time data on availability of stock.

I am not intending to complete a full round-up of what is becoming available -- just those things that have struck me as being somewhat useful and good in the coming year. Personally I have been interested as to how Google is working to make the world's information more available. They are serious about "the world's information" as a representative of Google stated in the official blog recently:

Official Google Blog: About the AOL announcement: "Our goal is to organize all of the world's information. When we say 'all the world's information,' this includes AOL's. We're going to work with the webmasters at AOL -- just as we work with webmasters all over the world -- to help them understand how the Google crawler works (with regard to robots.txt, how to use redirects, non-html content, etc.) so we don't inadvertently overlook their content."

This, of course includes organizing your personal files on your computer, your email in Gmail, and your searches in "psearch". So with 75 enhancements to Google last year, what can we expect this next year?

Now how does all this fit in with NetSuite my major program in which I work? Integration of Gmail with NetSuite? Integration of Google Search with NetSuite? This will be an interesting year!