Europe stands at the cross
roads of success or failure with the Internet. To succeed, European
industry must move quickly to build on current technical achievements
and recognise the many emerging commercial opportunities. This
warning message was given today by a Director of the European
Commission at the opening of e-2000, a conference bringing together
over 500 of Europe's leading developers Information Society technologies.
In her opening address Mrs Rosalie Zobel, said that the Internet
was adding a new dimension to competitive business and so Europe
must be at the forefront of developing new technologies, building
on its strengths, if it were to succeed. She was pleased that
e-2000 sponsored by the Information Society Technologies Programme
of the European Commission. This programme was implementing a
vision for Europe to become a major player in a global networked
economy where individuals and organisations can interact seamlessly
together.
All European governments have
confirmed their wish to foster access to the Information Society
for its citizens and encourage the use of Internet by business.
Mr Tomé, Spanish Secretary of State, who opened the Conference
and Exhibition, further strengthened this point. He praised the
initiative in holding the conference on this vital subject to
Europe and welcomed the delegates to Spain, which was playing
its part in extending the new technologies. He wished the delegates
fruitful discussions, as the work they were doing was crucial
to Europe's future economic position.
Directors of six leading technology
companies, operating in Europe, gave the e-2000 opening keynote
presentations. Göran Wahlberg of Nokia, dealt with new advances
in mobile communications, an area where Europe was ahead of the
rest of the world. He forecast that hand held Internet would
soon exceed PC access, while greater bandwidth for location independent
devices would create many new services. Manuel Perez, of Oracle,
described a case study of an Internet application of Local Government
services in the Spanish City of Villena. The venture's success
had resulted in it being applied to nine sites. George Hall,
of ICL, however argued that Government, having set the strategy,
had to leave e-business to the private sector. Internet, he asserted,
remained highly speculative and governments could not be expected
to undertake risk-taking ventures.
Mike Couzens of Cisco, warned that Internet would increase the
demand for new skills but described how his company used the
very same technology to alleviate the skill shortage. E-learning
had reduced training time and costs and brought high rates of
staff retention. Marc Aukland of BT referred to a European Round
Table study on the economic importance of knowledge. ERT, a grouping
of 47 major European companies, recognised that a large part
of company assets were intangible and was calling for ways to
measure, model and increase knowledge. The final plenary by Albert
Cobbaert of EDS discussed the merits of e-procurement, an application
that could bring great savings and efficiency to purchasing.
E-Procurement would be used by thousands of US companies and,
to stay competitive, European business had to take on Internet
based applications.
After the strategic plenary sessions the conference split into
six parallel streams to hear about, and discuss, current developments
projects and the business implications of future technologies.
Among the many technical topics to be examined were mobility,
digital enterprises and authentication, while business topics
included security, new working methods, legal aspects, exploitation
and the opportunities for smaller companies.
The major sponsors of e-2000
are Infineon Technologies and Canon Europe.
Ends
Notes to Editors
Elaboration of the six e-2000
keynote presentations
Mobility
An example of European leadership in technology was given in
the opening keynote paper. This was presented by Göran Wahlberg,
a Director of Nokia Corporation and one of the founding fathers
of standards for mobile communications. He claimed that the third
generation of mobile systems, offering a bandwidth of up to 2
Mb/s would permit location and time independent access to current
services: e-mail, share prices, weather, timetables and travel
delays and would generate a host of new services. New technical
advances such as Virtual Home Environment, enabled a user, anywhere,
to enjoy familiar features of his home network enabling more
tele-work and the true remote office. Data Communication would
soon become larger than voice communication and Mobile Internet
greater than PC access by 2005. Mobile communications would form
a natural part of the Information Society and help e-business
to enable globalisation.
Local Government Case Study
Manuel Pérez Muro a Director of Oracle presented Infoville,
a regional government application of Internet for its citizens.
The Valencia regional scheme soon attracted commercial and governmental
help. The pilot scheme, launched in Villena in 1996, created
the model for subsequent implementations in eight other cities.
Access, originally restricted to PC, was now by interactive TV,
with WAP coming soon. Today, 7,000 terminals serve 20,000 users
with average connect time of 49 minutes a day. Typical activities
were enquiries to the municipality, personal data and paying
bills, while local businesses publicised themselves though web
pages. Care has been taken to ensure that the scheme appealed
to sectional interests such as school children and teachers,
the elderly and women, and covered user training, personalisation,
data protection and affordability.
Hands Off
In a carefully argued keynote paper George Hall, Director of
ICL said that European public policy rested rightly on two strands:
competitiveness and the digital divide between the haves and
have-nots. While welcoming EU's initiatives such as the Bangerman
report and e-Europe he put forward a strong case for implementation
at local level. Governmental structures did not permit risk taking
and, with Internet applications being highly speculative, actions
should be left to private companies. If top-down initiatives
were not supported by bottom-up community programmes there was
little chance of success as they would not be sensitive to local
conditions and needs. eEurope provided a clear vision but Europe
needed successful community based projects undertaken with enlightened
self-interest.
Increasing Knowledge
Mike Couzens, a Vice President of Cisco Systems, predicted time-to-knowledge
overtaking time-to-market as a business driver. Businesses, realising
that human capital was an asset, could use e-learning on Internet
to gain commercial advantage from change. The Cisco Networking
Academy Programme was delivering e-learning to over 80,000 students
in 4,433 institutions in 75 countries. Cisco had also built its
own Internet based education strategy. The programme's accountability
meant students assessed their needs while administrators tracked
performance to improve resources and methods. Cisco's had lowered
its training costs and achieved time savings of 40-60 per cent.
Company quality and productivity had increased and staff retention
rates were the highest in the industry.
Assessing Knowledge
Marc Aukland, Chief Knowledge Manager, British Telecom referred
to deliberations of the ERT - European Round Table -47 leaders
of major companies with a combined turnover of 800 billion euros
and 4 million employees. Three major changes in the market place:
new technologies, globalisation and information openness would
mean that knowledge management and knowledge economy were key
issues. Knowledge was the main source of wealth with the shift
being towards intangibles and putting greater knowledge into
products and services. With half of market evaluation being intangible
assets, it was important to find ways to assess, develop and
exploit knowledge. Cooperation was vital. Organisations had to
realise that they could no longer work alone but had to build
up strong and flexible relationships with customers, other partners,
suppliers, emerging businesses and even direct competitors.
E-procurement for Competitive
Advantage
Arnold Cobbaert, Vice President of EDS, alerted companies to
the competitive advantage in the Internet application e-procurement.
Buying indirect goods could represent half of administration
costs and Ford claimed e-procurement could give up to thirty
per cent cost reduction in this area. Greater speed and consolidation
could bring further savings through preferred suppliers and better
discounts. Internet was proving ideal for e-procurement with
its network reach, presentation capabilities and interoperability.
E-procurement systems required an external digital link, catalogue
management and an approval infrastructure. Implementation required
rationalisation of the supply chain and definition of procurement
policies and e-procurement's the best candidates were utilities,
financial services and government. Three thousand US firms would
be applying e-procurement by 2004 and it was important that Europe
caught up. |