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iForce™ Heroes Program Heroes of the New Internet |
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Click below to see: The Human Side of the Internet Delivering Software as a Service A Mobile Sales Infrastructurre Turning Shipping Ports into Data Ports Conclusion: Quality and Reliability
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A Special Advertising Section Brought to you by
Kevin Robert Hopkins To many technology watchers,
the year 2001 will long be remembered as the "end of the dot-com
dream." In reality, it was merely the end of illusions. Amid the
Internet hype of the late 1990s, a great many investors and entrepreneurs
seemed convinced that the ordinary laws of economics no longer applied.
All too predictably, many such companies failed—not because of
some flaw in the Internet, but because of the flaws in well-intentioned
but ultimately naïve business models that declared that eyeballs
were more important than sales, that market capitalization mattered
more than profits. At last, we’re becoming
centered again. Suddenly, there is a difference in the ways in which
analysts and executives alike are looking at Internet initiatives, with
old-fashioned business concepts like purpose and profits once more in
vogue. Call it “The New Internet.” Pam Scanlon, executive
director of San Diego County’s Automated Regional Justice Information
System (ARJIS) and one of the current Sun Microsystems iForce™
Heroes, notes that, “in the early stages of the Net, people were
just throwing things up on the Web with no planning.” Now, in the
age of the New Internet, organizations are truly “trying to use
the Internet as part of their business.” She’s absolutely
right. Read the stories of the iForce™ Heroes that follow, and
it is inescapable how these individuals and the companies they represent
have made the Internet, with its real-time network of computers and
information, an essential part of their business. From building new
wireless markets to visionary new forms of software, from matching ships
with shipping containers to matching lost children with their parents,
these iForce™ Heroes have emerged as the vanguard of the New Internet,
creating an Internet where the bottom line is just as important as breaking
the mold. It is a pursuit, we are
convinced, that a great many other Internet innovators will just as
eagerly follow in the years to come.
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