Date:14/02/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/02/14/stories/2003021402361600.htm

Business

Goodbye Internet, hello Hypernet

By Anand Parthasarathy

MUMBAI FEB. 13. Forget what you have heard about the dotcom crash. We are at the beginning of the Net revolution not the end — with one difference: It is not the old Internet any more — it is a whole new Hypernet — and as far as India is concerned `the sky is the limit'. This was the upbeat message delivered here today by internationally-known `cyber guru' Don Tapscott at the ongoing NASSCOM 2003 conference.

To those who are being scared away by grim stories of the dotcom downturn in the West, Mr. Tapscott's advice was: "Don't throw away the New Economy baby with the dotcom bathwater". The canny thing is to understand the drastic change that the Internet has undergone from being a mere network of networks to a vast new distributed computing environment that has 650 million users worldwide today, a number that will become one billion within 18 months.

An Adjunct Professor of Management at Toronto University (Canada) and author of the best-selling book Digital Capital, Mr. Tapscott suggested that the outsourcing business that Indian companies were exploiting was "just the tip of the iceberg". Why? Because the entire business model had changed: the new global mantra was: "Focus on what you do best, partner to do the rest". Most big name computer companies including IBM, Dell or HP-Compaq did not manufacture their computers — they used specialist companies — some of which specialised only in making the 40,000 soldered connections on a printed circuit board. One of the best known games machines was Microsoft's X Box — but MS neither manufactured the games console hardware nor created the gaming software. This new business paradigm presented a huge opportunity for India because its software community had the ability to go beyond mere replication to innovation. The outsourced work potential for India slated to grow 65 per cent in 2003, Mr. Tapscott suggested.

He also pointed out a fact seldom appreciated — that 270 million youngsters in the age group 4-24 had access to and a unique knowledge of the Net. "This is a generation bathed in bits — kids are the authorities on the Internet today. What we called the generation gap has now become the generation lap: the young are laps ahead of adults in using the Internet", industries run by adults have often failed to understand their new customers: "The music industry continues to give the young CDs, when all they want is streaming music, which they can change or use in any way they like." Old style industry must understand these new aspirations — or perish, Mr. Tapscott warned.