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December - 2015 - issue > CXO Insights

The Technology Meta-Trend That Will Impact Your Business

George Chacko, Principal Systems Engineer, Brocade India
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
George Chacko, Principal Systems Engineer, Brocade India
Headquartered in San Jose, California, Brocade Communications proffers data center networking solutions that enable the businesses to manage their information assets in a hassle-free way.

The technology industry operates on micro and meta innovation cycles. Micro-cycles happen every hour, day, week, and year. But each meta-cycle is approximately 20 years, bringing fundamental disruption that changes the industry and ripples through every other business to change the way we work and live. We are now entering the next meta-cycle.

From the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, the mainframe terminal and host model was the primary platform for business innovation. Analyst firm IDC calls this the 'First Platform' for innovation. The network for the First Platform included private line connectivity and IBM's proprietary Systems Network Architecture, which was created in 1974.

Flash forward 20 years to the mid-1990s, we saw the dawn of the next meta-cycle. The 'Second Platform' for computing innovation was based on the client/server and LAN/WAN models. As a result, the IT industry shifted to IP networks and of course, the most famous of all IP networks: the Internet.

But it wasn't the Internet like we know it today. In 1995, there were only 16 million users on the Internet and 2,700 Web sites. Moreover, there were fewer than 100 million mobile phone subscribers and you couldn't connect your mobile device to the Internet. But over the next 20 years, the Internet would change every industry it touched.


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