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Foreword
“ Much of the best work in the world has been done against seeming impossibilities.”- Dale Carnegie
Summer 1980: Available on newsstands is the latest issue of Byte: Small Systems Journal. The futuristic cover illustrates several microcomputers interconnected via optical tubes.“ Intercomputer Communications” the cover boldly pronounces. The editorial notes that the reality of the day was communication through the phone network at 300 bits per second( meaning that this e-book would take about an hour to transfer!), but spoke of a future with speedy, always-on communications between computers that would facilitate the instantaneous exchange of information and goods. To most people the prospect of such technology becoming an everyday staple was thrilling, though somewhat inconceivable.
Summer 1995: Netscape launches its IPO; Amazon. com launches its website aiming at selling books; eBay launches its user-to-user commerce site with a dream of accelerating Pez dispenser trading. The seeds of global adoption of the Internet, world-wide-web and e-commerce are planted.
Summer 2015: The number of Internet users has grown to nearly 40 percent global penetration – close to three billion people across thousands of devices worldwide, including computers, smartphones, tablets, watches and other wireless technology. Commerce transacted over the Internet in the U. S. has grown to $ 250B. The future of 1980 has become a reality.
The data behind the commerce and supply chain of this computer web have come a long way in powering such growth fundamentally changing the world for both online and offline traditional brick and mortar retailers. Billions of Internet users research, buy and sell online; seemingly unlimited data is analyzed and meaningful observations are extracted; supply chains and delivery processes are optimized; and our expectations from these experiences grow with each passing benchmark of excellence.
Competition in the commerce marketplace is fierce amongst all sectors, and this is a critical time for both B2B and B2C companies to adopt best practices and carefully analyze key metrics with considerable foresight. Success factors include: technology stack, supply chain and overall user experience with appropriate infrastructure, content, data, speed, consistency, and delivery.
Summer 20XX: What types of services and solutions will develop from increasingly sophisticated technology, networks, data, infrastructure and accessibility? Which companies will be at the forefront of those advancements? What will the future of sustainable omnichannel retailing look like? What will the global impact be for both individuals and businesses alike, as IoT continues to disrupt the supply chain? It is incredibly thrilling to imagine what the next phase of intercomputer communications will bring.
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