Government Technology - December 2007 - (Page 24)

20 YEARS IN REVIEW ON THE TECHNOLOGY FRONT, optimism abounded. 1995 was, in many ways, the year the Information Age grew from infancy into adolescence. Industry insiders began making predictions, some startlingly accurate, as to what was in store for the coming years. John Thibault, then-CEO of GeoTel, saw a “significant re-emergence of new voice technologies,” a prediction the coming era of VoIP certainly satisfied. Kenneth Hamer Hodges, then a vice president at Telco Systems, said Ethernet would soon overtake ATM and frame relay systems. Art Zins of the now-defunct Digital Equipment Corp. claimed PCs would become “the platform of choice for delivering all sorts of digital products and services — from online magazines to interactive games to home shopping and virtual classrooms” — check, check, check and check. Some even expected to see mass introduction of wireless WANs by 1997, though in reality, wireless networking would not be commonplace until after the turn of the century. DOT-COM BOOM. Many have also pinpointed 1995 as the year the dot-com boom began. Investors everywhere noticed the digital economy’s tentacles could reach almost anyone, anywhere. Fortunes were apparently ripe for the picking, and traditional business philosophies were cast by the wayside in favor of new strategies like “growth before profit” and “get large or get lost.” In Silicon Valley, it seemed almost anyone with a pen and a cocktail napkin could formulate a business plan well enough to warrant millions in venture capital. Countless new companies sprang forth from seeming nothingness. The mid- to late ’90s saw the creation of eBay, Amazon, PayPal and Travelocity — each a roaring success in their respective marketplace. Many more companies, however, folded quickly or suffered agonizing, drawn-out deaths. Webvan, the online grocer, simply couldn’t sell enough products to justify the cost of its infrastructure. And, of course, poor Pets.com and its much-loved sock puppet mascot became the icons for dot-com failure. During the Super Bowl in January 2000, Pets.com aired one of the most memorable and acclaimed commercials of all time. The pet supply retailer went public a month later only to close its doors, real and virtual, the following November, with shares of stock valued at a pitiful $0.19. It’s worth recalling that government at the time — e-government in particular — wasn’t immune to the dot-com hysteria. Several e-government companies sprang up during the boom, including one called govWorks, which was profiled in Startup. com, a documentary film about the firm’s rise and fall in the late ’90s. govWorks epitomized the dot-com boom and bust, becoming one of many companies that disappeared as quickly as they came. 1996 The first State and Local Government Best of the Web awards are presented WRAL-TV, in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., sends first high-definition broadcast signal j j DEC_07 MapQuest debuts 1 997 WorldCom merges with MCI Inc., forming MCI WorldCom First DVD players made available Intel releases Pentium II processor In 1997, the Los Angeles Police Department began work on a $20 million IT infrastructure overhaul that gave police access to WANs and LANs that worked across all city government systems. In addition, thousands of new workstations were added and laptops were provided for officers in the field. Steve Jobs returns to Apple Original IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) standard developed, providing bandwidth of 2 Mbps Palm Computing releases the PalmPilot In 1996 an Israeli company called Mirabilis created the first Internetwide instant messaging (IM) program. ICQ allowed anyone with an Internet connection to communicate in real time. For the public sector, IM challenges the standard definition of what is and isn’t public record. 24 http://Pets.com http://Pets.com http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - December 2007

Government Technology - December 2007 Contents Point of View Big Picture Profile The Last Mile GT Spectrum Well...How Did We Get Here? Dark Spaces A Paler Shade of Green? Decertification Dilemma Game On Two Cents Products Signal:Noise

Government Technology - December 2007

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