The Role of Technology in Shifting Power to Consumers

The XML RevolutionThis XML revolution will happen over a two-, three-, or four-year period. In our industry, it will completely revolutionize who makes the software that's important to people in the future and it will revolutionize the way people think about the Internet.
Let me give you some examples. Today, most financial services firms I talk to want to be the one-stop shop for financial services. But in the future, your broker, your bank, and your insurance company will all have Web sites that describe themselves, and somebody will probably have a piece of software that produces your personal page, which provides you with your personal financial situation even if you have accounts in 20 brokerage firms, 10 banks, and six insurance companies. The Web sites that don't do this will find themselves at an increasing competitive disadvantage because there will be a pressure to return power to consumers. The companies that do so will be the ones that thrive.
Manufacturers will also see changes in the amount of data available to them. If you have a very complicated manufacturing supply chain, the key is the ability to see not only your suppliers, but also your suppliers' suppliers, and your suppliers' suppliers' suppliers, as well as your dealers and your customers. You want a very linked view of that. Today, creating any kind of a linked view is very hard because it's unlikely that your suppliers' Web sites will work with your Web site, or your dealers' Web sites, or your retailers' Web sites.
XML technology makes it possible to have data flow easily and seamlessly across these sites. The Internet will be something that gets programmed or customized by businesses, by end users, and by software companies on behalf of end users. It's a fundamental change whether we're taking about business-to-business or business-to-consumer.
Another example is in the mobile area. Today, there's a sort of captivity between what happens on the Internet and these new mobile devices. If you want to bring out a new cell phone, you literally have to go work with a couple of guys and get them to render their data so it can be displayed on your mobile devices. XML will lead to a separation between those two things, so that any Web site can be accessed on any device.