Okay, I realise I am going to quite deservedly take some flak for the VProfessional strapline being Solutions and Services for the 21st Century. No, I’m not a Buck Rogers fan and mention Twiki as a sign of technologies to come and I may have to strangle you. Mel Blanc should have stuck to Bugs Bunny.
And there, in that first paragraph, see already why this century is likely to be just as much a landmark in human evolution as the 20th Century. Collaboration on a global scale and significant technology infrastructure put at your fingertips the facts you need (in this case from the Wikipedia). And not just in plain text either. Text, images, audio and video trailers all just a few clicks away. Dive into ebay, search for an item and, almost immediately, see a dynamic, morphous catalogue with thumbnails, vendor feedback ratings and online agents waiting to refine your search further. These technologies empower you and are operating on a scale that far, far exceeds the Internet of the 1990’s. That ebay search is transmitting more data in what feels like an instant than your year 2000 modem connection could download in three minutes or more. And to think we were calling it the Information Super Highway then!
At the risk of standing on my soapbox too early, I feel these are exciting times for Professional Service firms. Rich media and the so called "Web 2.0" technologies – wikis, weblogs, webinars, audio, video - gives the people within your firm the chance to more effectively demonstrate their talent, experience and, well, personality with your prospective clients, online. It gives your clients information which is more digestible and which should be made perpetually available to them. Social networking and collaboration technologies are a boom area too for coming years. Even core back end systems are being overhauled in certain sectors – SAP’s growing foothold in legal and Thomson Elite’s new 3E, for example.
So, in a nutshell, I feel the company is likely to be helping deliver these new solutions and is offering very new services to help make it happen for busy firms and particularly busy IT Directors. But, please, no Twiki impressions. No, really. Oh dear, too late…