An open, connected world is a vision that is created by the entire UNIX community: vendors, developers, users and resellers. It is absolutely true that the UNIX community has spent thirty years staking out and perfecting the vision of a world-wide network of interoperability and open standards.

The UNIX community has pioneered a model of communications which has brought us to the next great stage of information automation. Eighty percent of Internet solutions are UNIX based. UNIX is the leading platform for Internet tool development. For over three decades, UNIX has been about open standards, flexibility and end-to-end connectivity. Thousands upon thousands of professionals and devotees have worked for decades toward ensuring that disparate systems can connect and be useful in their diversity. When people think of open systems they justly think of, and justly credit, UNIX.

UNIX has always been about choice; it's been about putting control of that choice where it belongs - in the hands of the customer, rather than in the grip of any single vendor. The emergence of the Internet computing model is truly a thrilling hallmark of our era; it stands in testimony to its achievements of connectivity and scalability.

Networks mask complexity, but we who attach systems to networks and who develop applications for networks must grapple with complexity.  The GUI is the battleground where the complex is rendered not only simple, but useful, and at a price which is affordable to anyone, anywhere.

The World Wide Web only took off when the interfaces that made it approachable and usable appeared for everyone who wanted them. This is similar to what happened in the touch screen Point of Sale business, starting in 1985 when we put the first application specific, graphic user interface POS system into operation.  We're tremendously proud of our role in demonstrating the need for specific purpose POS GUI's which are better suited to the end user than the general-purpose GUI's provided by the companies which wrote the operating systems.

No important technology in the history of the world, not the automobile, not the toaster, not networks, became ubiquitous until it was easy to use, useful, affordable, and conformed to the standards of the day.

There are other operating systems which are very much UNIX wannabe operating systems.  They are proprietary, however.  There's nothing open about them.  These operating systems are expensive and allow the companies which produce them to intrude into the domains of those who use them.  In the eyes of these companies, the only thing wrong with UNIX is that it is an open OS platform that they don't own, control and make money from.  So, they'll do what they always do - they'll create a duplicate of it, ridicule and denigrate what it is they are copying, then replace what they have attempted to copy with their proprietary knock-off. It's a high tech shell game.  These operating systems are being crafted into workalike versions of Unix; their makers are spinning stories of ease of use, of shrink wrapped client/server consistency from the desktop to the server.

POS system solutions integrate the food & beverage enterprise, making it more efficient. In many ways, intranets and extranets fulfill the promise of client/server -- they give customers something they've already been looking for and investing in. However, when we move to Internet based e-commerce, this is uncharted territory for most customers. These are applications that bring the world of consumer products to  a world of consumers - - connecting an enterprise with a billion potential buyers of its goods and services. The Internet based business model is harder to describe and the pay-off is harder to predict. But the potential is enormous.

As more and more net based applications come online and people make the shift from browsing to buying and working, we'll see a redefinition of the term "killer application." A "killer app" will not be a shrink wrapped program that sells millions of copies. A killer app will be any usefulness available from the Internet that touches millions of people and helps them do what they want to do. Business to consumer. And business to business. For your company, the next killer app will be the Internet and the usefulness you make available with it.

You won't think of useful software as "applications." You won't "download" them. You'll just tune in various Internet `channels' to get something done.  And we'll see another fundamental change -- applications won't come just from software companies.  Every business with an Internet presence will make them available -- for their customers and their employees.

If workers inside your company are going to use an intranet to truly change how they work - and not just look at newsletters - the enterprise has to change how it operates. If you want to renew a drivers license on a network, the DMV is going to have to change the way it works.

Who makes those decisions. A Web master? Hardly. These changes are made by CEOs, government officials, university administrators, heads of marketing, engineering, customer service, human resources. The people whose hands are on the lever of core business processes. It's a tough group.

Solutions don't begin with questions like, "Which browser do you like?" or "Which operating system do you prefer?" They begin with: "What business are you in?"

The high cost of PC computing for businesses is well known and documented. That's why many companies today are evaluating an alternative to desktop PC's. They see Internet Access devices and applications at a fraction of the cost of PCs. For many of them, these will replace PCs.

In a networked world, processing and applications are hosted on the Internet, not on the desktop. When those apps become an integral part of the way hundreds of millions of people live and work and play, the systems behind the scenes must be secure, reliable and always available.

The Internet phenomenon results from one thing, and it's really not technology. It's agreement.  Agreement on standards.  One measure of leadership in this business has to be whether a company is working for open standards, or working to erect proprietary walls, whether the company is working to ensure the true promise of "any client to any server" is fulfilled, or working to make it their client, to their server.

A world populated by closed or semisolid architectures forces customers to choose, and then to pray that they chose correctly. It takes away choice.  And now it may slow down or prevent the realization of the networked world the realization of the networked world all of us want to build for our customers.

The issue is simply, whether choice and control resides with you the customer, or with one company. The issue is whether we will come together to do what is right for the customer. ViewTouch has decided. Our future is staked to the vision of an open networked world -- a world many of you envisioned and are committed to make a reality.

What is ahead? Well, what is unfolding now is as revolutionary as anything which has happened in  many centuries. In the near future, for the typical user, locally resident applications, OS's, data storage and computers themselves will be unnecessary. They will continue to exist, of course, but they will, less and less, be components which the typical user will bother with.

Instead, the typical user needs, wants, and will have (I'm talking about the 6 billion people who don't have the desire or time to be bothered with the "desktop experience") ubiquitous audio/video interfacing to a high speed, wireless internet. This communications and info entertainment paradigm doesn't require a computer, an OS, data storage in the current sense, or any locally resident applications.

Affordable and Versatile Displays, Connectivity, Interfaces and MultiCasting Multimedia Content - that's where it's at. For the typical user, throw out most of what used to be accepted - hardware, software and file transfer-centered data; then move on to this new world.  We are moving closer to a true commodity information environment. The future belongs to limitless types of devices that conform to one primary principle: They seamlessly communicate with other devices.

Freedom of information will require isolating those who would build empires whose missions are to control the interfaces, the access, the transports and the standards. We must struggle to make and to keep these things free, not allowing any company to accede these rights. Look for software or hardware vendors that find ways to create mutually beneficial relationships among their products in real time. Their devices will discover one another by using mutually agreed upon protocols.