"A Tale of Two Cities": The Internet Revolution - Hope and Fear
Wednesday, June 16
1:00 P.M. - 2:00 P.M.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. [Charles Dickens]

The broad popularity of the Internet is provoking dramatic changes in the way computer systems are used. But this drama is distracting - it is much easier to make broad claims than achieve them. We must not only achieve these aims but do so in a way that becomes routine and repeatable. From now on and well into the next century , the expectations of users to have Internet delivered applications that are highly available, secure, dependable in response time and of exceptional quality will place competitive challenges that businesses will need to solve, in cooperation with their technology component suppliers of enterprise operating systems, hardware platforms, and application builders. The ability to involve developers worldwide and to take advantage of Internet-wide redundancy are promising opportunities to exploit but not the complete answer. Compaq and our components has been the base for large portions of the Internet revolution, but there is much work to be done to move from a revolutionary environment to a repeatable, dependable one.