For almost ten years now, we have been witnessing a decisive shift from client-server software to software as a service.  The mobile Web 2.0 global market will be worth £11.5 bn by 2013, according to Juniper Research, rising from the current £2.8 bn and spearheaded by the rise in user-generated content and social networks. Web 3.0 is about replacing existing software platforms with a new generation of platforms as a service.

Web 1.0: Anyone Can Transact

Web 1.0 was about the emergence of the innovative applications from companies like eBay, Amazon.com, and Google. Although we thought of them as Web sites at the time, they were really amazing applications with a level of functionality, ease of use, and scale that had rarely been seen before by the average consumer. Transactions, not just of goods but of knowledge, became ubiquitous and instant. The efficiency and transparency that was once the domain of global financial markets was now at the command of individual consumers and businesses. Web 1.0 remains a huge driving force today and will continue to be for some time.

Web 2.0: Anyone Can Participate

Web 2.0 is about the next generation of applications on the Internet, featuring user-generated content, collaboration, and community. Anyone can participate in content creation. Posting a viral video on YouTube, tagging photos from a party on Flickr, or writing about sport on Blogspot requires no technical skill, just an Internet connection. Participation changes our idea of content itself: content isn’t fixed at the point of publication—it comes alive. Google’s AdSense became an instant business model in particular for bloggers, and video-sharing sites have rewritten the rules of popular culture and viral content.

Whether you are creating a business around Web 1.0 or 2.0, building massively scalable data centers that are secure, reliable, and highly available is not a job for the faint of heart or shallow of pocket. For companies like Salesforce.com entering the emerging software as a service (SaaS) industry, the massive time and capital requirements remain a substantial barrier to entry. Moreover, traditional client-server software development is still mired in painful complexity. And the “rewards” for creating a successful application are arduous deployments and maintenance.

Web 3.0: Anyone Can Innovate

Web 3.0 changes all of this by completely innovating the technology of the traditional software industry. The novelty of Web 3.0 is that anyone can innovate, anywhere. Code is written, collaborated on, debugged, tested, deployed, and run in the software development "cloud". When innovation is untethered from the time and capital constraints of infrastructure, it can truly flourish.

For businesses, Web 3.0 means that "SaaS" applications can be developed, deployed, and evolved far more quickly and cost-effectively than traditional software of the client-server era. For developers, Web 3.0 means that all they need to create their dream application is an idea, a browser, and a few Pocket USB's. Because every developer around the world can access the same powerful cloud infrastructures, Web 3.0 will empower small business enterprises.

Web 3.0 means that you can spend more time focusing on core business values being offerd to customers, not the infrastructure to support it. Because code lives in the cloud, global and local talent pools can contribute to it. Because it runs in the cloud, a truly global market can subscribe to it as a service.

Cheers Mark Bower

Director, NextWave.IT Ltd

www.nextwaveit.biz

enquiry@nextwaveit.biz