INTERVIEW:
Question 1
Hewlett Packard was one of the first companies to promote the plug’n’play
philosophy. How will it affect the use of the Internet in the coming decade ?
Answer
That’s a very interesting question, because plug’n’play is not
necessarily what the old IT specialist was looking for, because his pride was in being
able to figure out how things worked. But the Internet has brought computing and IT
technology to the wider public, to people who had never used a computer before. You do not
expect people who use a PC for the first time to have all the skills or the interest to
try to make things work. So plug’n’play was something which was very important
for us from the point of the PC but also from the point of the peripherals, because HP is
the largest supplier of printers and scanner technologies to the world of PC computing. To
be able to put these things together and to have them work together is very important. We
have worked for years with Microsoft to make sure that plug’n’play is not only a
software but also a hardware component where you put these products together and they
work.
Question 2
HP is working with Kodak to spread digital photography through the Internet. How?
Answer
Digital photography is a completely new area that we are looking at. It actually goes back
to a very particular set of core competencies which we have, that of colour inkjet
printing, where you are able to develop a picture which, if done right and with the proper
technology, is indistinguishable from a chemically processed picture. So we have been
working closely with Kodak and other companies to develop this whole area of digital
photography. That goes, of course, from taking a picture with a camera - and many
companies today are supplying digital cameras to the market - to the point where you
transmit the picture over the Internet. So you need pictures of different levels of
specificity. That means that you need high definition pictures if you want to print them
out, if you want to impress somebody with the quality, and you need relatively low
definition pictures if you want to send them over the Internet, because you do not want to
wait for a picture to develop on the Web page. We have been able not only to develop the
technology as far as the hardware is concerned, but also the software side, where we can
develop the multimedia components of the Internet by providing cameras, the networking
ability of the pictures, the printing out of those pictures, the treatment of those
pictures. Because you cannot merely send the picture, you can also manipulate the picture.
And that is something which is very interesting to people who are selling products over
the network.
Question 3
But behind this there is the jet send protocol?
Answer
No. The jet send protocol is a protocol which does not necessarily support
this activity, because digital photography is already being used a great deal. Jet send is
a different idea, and what we’re doing here is working with other suppliers of
peripherals in net appliances and also with software suppliers to build an environment
where you can have Internet appliances talk to each other. For example, you could have a
scanner and a printer talk to each other. Or you could scan the picture and then send it
right to the printer without necessarily going through a PC. You can already do this but
now you scan the picture into the PC, then the PC sends the picture over the Internet to
another PC, and that PC sends it to a printer, and then it’s printed out. The idea of
jet send is that each appliance on the WWW, on the Internet, is going to be able to
address another appliance, so a scanner can send a picture directly to a printer without
necessarily going through your own PC.
Question 4
What are the possible applications of smart cards? HP has recently bought Veriphone,
hasn't it?
Answer
The acquisition of Veriphone is very much in line with this whole idea of providing our
customers with e-commerce products and solutions. Today Veriphone owns 60 percent of the
US$800 billion business transacted, 60 percent of the market where you buy with your
credit card, you buy a sweater or a pair of shoes. The smart card is not going to replace
the Veriphone terminal, but is going to become a more intelligent credit card, a credit
card which will have a chip on which you can store electronic money. Furthermore, you will
be able to store on that chip security information which will make sure that the
transaction is much less risky, reducing the likelihood of somebody interacting with your
transfer or using your credit card - which you could lose - to make purchases to your
account. The smart card, or the imagine card as we call it, is going to give you a higher
security of electronic transactions over the Internet.
Question 5
Are there are other examples already in use ?
Answer
Most of the applications will probably be financial, bank cards etc., but you will see
smart cards being used in medical applications, where you have your personal data stored
on a card and if you have an accident, that card will be able to give vital information
about you to a paramedic, who will probably be the first on the scene, and who will be
able to make sure that you get the most suitable treatment, perhaps even saving your life.
Question 6
Just over a decade ago HP embraced the philosophy of just-in-time production. Are we now
arriving at a kind of just-in -time in commerce and in business-to-business relations
through the network?
Answer
Just-in-time was a term which was coined in the manufacturing process. The major interest
in this new philosophy was to reduce your work in progress, to lower your inventories.
That means that you had a manufacturing process which was defined to where it starts, what
kind of products are being added to that process, and those products would arrive
just-in-time. So you would not have a large storage area of components in stock. The
Internet, of course, will allow you to go even further than just-in-time. Now you will be
able not only to produce products at the end into a stock environment or onto a shelf, but
you will be able to go backwards and start producing the product once you have received an
order over the Internet. Then, of course, just-in-time delivery of all the components to
build the products is going to be even more important than it is today. I believe the
Internet and the use of electronic commerce is going to elevate the idea of just-in-time
manufacturing - just-in-time delivery, just-in-time specifications from the user, but also
just-in-time implementation at the customer point - and make it even more important than
it was before.
Question 7
What is the concept of the "extended enterprise" that HP is promoting now?
Answer
The extended enterprise model is the realisation of just-in-time . Because if you want to
extend the just-in-time idea to more than just a manufacturing process, then you see the
extended model. You get to the customer with a new product just-in-time, when the customer
wants to hear about a new product, or is looking for a new product. You are able to get
there through, for example, the Internet by knowing exactly when customers are looking for
new products. For example, knowing how old your car is, your preferences, they will be
able to send you information about a new car over the Internet. At the same time your bank
sends you a credit saying: "Congratulations, we can offer you this fantastic deal in
case you are interested in buying a car". At the same time the local car dealer would
invite you for a test drive. The extended enterprise is now going far beyond what you used
to have before, and that was somebody manufacturing cars. Now you are building an
environment which embraces the customer, it embraces the delivery through your
concessionaires, through your dealerships; it may embrace the suppliers of additional bits
and pieces, like accessories to the automobile, it embraces the financial side, the car
insurance company. So the extended enterprise is now bringing all these bits and pieces
all together, and is going to make the purchase of a car more enjoyable. And here you can
see how the Internet is going to extend what has been used internally in the company as
the Intranet. The extended enterprise idea means going out and including all the members
of this interaction in this commercial process.
Question 8
How are companies using Intranets in the United States?
Answer
You can assume that most American companies today are using Intranets. The estimates are
that between 55 and 65 percent of businesses are using Intranets. Those who do not yet use
them will go that way in the near future. Because the Intranet allows communication inside
the company which is turning the old electronic mail idea around by saying: "I’m
not sending you electronic mail but I’m going to make information available for you,
which you then can pull any time you want." So at your convenience, you will be able
to go into the Intranet and get information about the company, the products, some
personnel issues, some customers, some delivery processes, etc. etc. What you will see
over the next few years is an explosion of the Intranet. I believe that this is going to
be the fastest growing part of the Internet business for the next couple of years.
Question 9
And do you believe in push technology, or is it a false promise?
Answer
No, there is no false promise behind push technology. I think you need both. You need to
have the ability to go and look for selected information. And in an Intranet usually you
know where the information is. Push technology is necessary because the content in the Web
is increasing at such a rapid pace that you no longer have any idea what is available. If
you have the possibility to use a push engine, then it will help you to take advantage of
the information available. But that push engine is not going to invent a profile for you.
You still have to sit down and go through the painful definition of what it is you want to
see. And very often you will click on too many things and the push engine will push down
on you on a weekly or hourly basis. So you will have to do some work at the beginning to
define your profile. I would like to see this on an hourly basis, if it’s a stock
price. I would like to see this on a weekly basis, if it’s currency rates. I would
like to see this on a monthly basis, if it’s particular news about companies etc.,
etc. So you define those profiles and then you let a push engine collect all this
information and then bring it onto your desktop. But then of course you modify it, because
as I’ve seen myself using the technology, at the beginning you’re using far too
much and then you go under because the engine keeps pushing it down onto you. But I think
that it is a very important technology. And it is a technology which you will use more
outside of your company, and you’ll use the pull inside of your Intranet. I think
that the pull side is going to be more an Intranet kind of activity, while the push
engines are going to be more towards the Extranet.
Question 10
Do we need more bandwidth for the Internet, or are there solutions that can save
bandwidth?
Answer
I don’t think I’m wrong when I say that we will fill any bandwidth we get.
I’m talking about the suppliers of information and the users of information, the
people who link into the Internet as well as those who provide services on the Internet.
Because if you look at a Web page just two years ago, it looks so different from a Web
page today, with all the activity and all the turning Java applets, etc. All this needs
bandwidth. Even in the future more and more bandwidth is going to be needed because people
will want to see more moving pictures, more video clips, hear more music. More
specifically, when you start looking at e-commerce or e-business, you will probably want
to see many more details about the products, if you want to buy clothes, or you may want
to have a 3-dimensional presentation, to turn the image and see how it looks. You have
probably heard that you will be able to store your own measurements in the computer, and
you will be wearing the coat, the dress, the shirt, and you will be able to look at
yourself and how it fits you. Now, this requires an enormous amount of bandwidth. I
believe that the bandwidth which becomes available will be eaten up by the providers, the
providers will create a need for more bandwidth; the bandwidth will have to be invested
in. It's going to be an interplay play between the two sides, which is going to continue
for many, many years.
Question 11
And the wireless will replace the wired?
Answer
There are some interesting schools of thought there, because the wireless bandwidth at
this point in time is more limited than the terrestrial bandwidth. If you used, for
example, a GSM telephone today, you would be able to do a connection on 9600 bauds. If you
used the telephone line, any simple telephone line, you would be able to go to 28.8 or
with the latest technology now to 56 kbits. So what you see is that the terrestrial
systems are even faster than the telephone systems. Now, as I said, there are two schools
of thought. One is that voice is going to move towards the wireless side and therefore
data is going to be more terrestrial. The other school of thought is that the wireless is
going to become wide bandwidths and therefore is not going to make a difference. So
we’ll have to see what happens. At this point in time, you still have much faster
connectivity over terrestrial networks than you have over the wireless network, until we
either add more channels to the GSM phone, which is becoming a question of cost, or you
suddenly see other models coming along. For example, some of the ideas for satellite
communication, where you would be able to send a request over the phone line but then get
the downloaded information from a satellite in large bandwidth. Now, these are models
which are being played with right now, and it’s going to be interesting to watch in
which way they will develop. But bandwidth is going to be in demand in the near future.
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