But we have to accept that its rate of growth and maturation is not constant. Now we have to prepare ourselves for the next, slower, phase of development. To weather this stage, our industry must develop a new way to fund the new public network infrastructure. Internet advertising, voice profits, venture capital, even junk bonds are not enough. Ventures founded merely to make the Net faster or bigger miss the point.
Cash is king.
From the supplier standpoint, this is not the time for missionary positioning. Those whose solutions can be seen as evolutionary rather than revolutionary technology stand to benefit, as do vendors whose product offerings are small enough, flexible enough and cost-effective enough to be shown to deliver ROI to network service providers quickly. We anticipate brutal price competition in each market segment, especially those where too many startups were funded. As competitive providers fail, incumbents have less incentive to migrate to new platforms and so may elect to slow procurements even though they have the funds to accomplish them. These conservative approaches are usually popular when times are tough, because they offer minimal risk, incremental cost, and immediate payback.