6 Built-in security. External threats to systems security, coupled with growing consumer privacy concerns, will figure prominently in the design and operation of next-generation systems, with likely involvement by various governmental agencies from state to international levels (likely spurred on by privacy lawsuits). Since next-generation applications will reach much deeper into day-to-day activities of consumers, businesses and governments, they will require built-in safeguards far beyond passwords and physical security. Enabling technology: Agent-based computing. Monitoring software will run side-by-side with applications to test the validity of every request over the global open network of integrated applications. Each transaction will carry its own encrypted security profile and generate a secured audit trail. Autonomous software using agent technology will negotiate in the background to ensure that interactions in the open marketplace of Web services follow the rules. The same technology will be used to manage the millions of interactions taking place across the network, perhaps supported by regulated service providers that offer secured audit trails and public records.

Key impact: The integrity of data will become a matter not of engineering but of public policy. Capability-based technology for securing systems, along with encryption techniques, must be introduced into next-generation applications and designed into the highest levels of your network. The combination of anxiety over global terrorism, the increasingly open exchange of data between participants in the supply chain, and the growing unease among consumers about the collection and use of personal information, will move security to centre stage, where regulatory agencies, legislators, lobbyists and courts will play a prominent role in design.

7 Disposable computing. As the cost of computing continues to decrease, it will become cost-effective to introduce some level of intelligence to each individual item in commerce. The Auto-ID Centre at MIT estimates that about a trillion new Internet-friendly "devices" will be added to the network in the next 10 years, with chips and radio transmitters simply included as part of a product's basic packaging. Enabling technology: Moore's Law again. Today, companies including Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble and Gillette are experimenting with cheap electronic product codes that transmit data using radio frequencies. The emerging standard will assign every item - not just every SKU - with a unique identifier. And an Internet address. Key impact: The information supply chain is completed. The emergence of disposable computing will test the scalability, flexibility and security of next-generation architecture by flooding it with trillions of new transactions, sending and receiving small amounts of data that track the flow of goods and services throughout the supply chain. As more and more data becomes available in usable forms - particularly data generated after a product leaves the store - the "information supply chain" will begin to function as an independent source of revenue, generating invaluable data about product performance, consumer behaviour and logistics. Look for forecasting applications - which today rest on shaky assumptions - to become scientific and reliable. Bundling information services with physical products such as smart appliances will be another key source of new value. The understandable concerns of consumers over data privacy will be resolved along the way, largely by consumers sharing in the value derived from the use of their data. Today, grocery stores trade significant price discounts for consumer data using preferred shopper identification cards.