A new Information Age is here. The Information Highway isn't just a vision anymore. Everywhere you look, it's under construction. Telephone and cable companies are building the links. Computer and TV manufacturers are designing the hardware. Publishers, developers, and producers are rushing to create content for delivery. And software companies such as Oracle Corporation are creating the tools and programs to make it all work together.
The Information Highway is not just a faster computer network, or a phone system with video, or a TV you can talk to. By taking all types of information, including numbers, text, sound, and images, and combining it in digital form, and making it available anywhere at any second, and making it infinitely manipulable, the Information Highway will utterly change our lives.
As the world's largest vendor of software for managing information, Oracle has the experience to help pioneer the Information Highway. End-to-end Oracle Media solutions provide the foundation for creating interactive services, and running and managing the interactive networks that will speed those services to your home and business.
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Welcome to the New Information Age
Throughout history, each quantum increase in the availability of and access to information has enlightened people and expanded business opportunities. And time and time again, information has proven itself to be an unequaled source of power for both individuals and businesses.
The seed of the Information Age was planted nearly 2,300 years ago at the foot of the Nile River when the great library at Alexandria was founded to gather the world's information. In the mid-1400s AD, the invention of moveable type helped spread the Renaissance and remade the world through the proliferation of printed books.
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The great Library of Alexandria was founded shortly after the city itself in 332 BC in what is now called Egypt. By the time Julius Caesar arrived in 47 BC, the Alexandrian collections had grown to an amazing 700,000 works. According to historical lore, passing merchants were required to make their scrolls available for copying. Unsurpassed as an information storehouse in its day, this library became the focus of a great university and a great culture. Until its destruction in 391 AD and again in 642 AD after being rebuilt, the great Alexandrian library stimulated science, philosophy, education, civilization, and prosperity.
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Three hundred years later, the harnessing of steam and other forms of power remade the world again with the advent of powered printing presses and inexpensive distribution of books via railroad and trans-ocean shipping lines.
And, less than 50 years ago, television began its irresistible invasion of the world's living rooms. Initially broadcasting a snowy flicker of black and white images, few predicted that this video communications technology would come to dominate culture and society throughout the world. But it did.
We watched and we listened. But like every other previous media, television was a one-way communications device. That's about to change. TVs, along with new classes of PCs and other information appliances, are about to become interactive two-way video communications devices capable of sending as well as receiving information. As consumers, we'll be able to communicate and interact directly with each other, and with the providers of information, whether for entertainment, enrichment, or business.
Welcome to the new Information Age. This time, it's digital.
The Information Highway
In this Information Age, new ways of accessing and disseminating information, in the form of news, entertainment, advertising, education, product data, and more, put the globe on the brink of a revolution that will change the ways we live, learn, work, and play.
Drawing from massive libraries of video, audio, images, and text, the first interactive services will allow us to design personalized news reports, shop interactively from home, play games, and select and watch programs and movies on-demand. Eventually the same technologies and infrastructure will be used to provide widespread access to telemedicine, distance learning, remote voting, electronic town hall meetings, and other enriching and necessary services. We'll be able to access these services from anywhere.
Consumers will have the power to use whatever devices they want to get virtually any kind of information, exactly how and when they want it. And businesses will have a much more powerful, targeted, and cost-effective way to reach their desired audiences.
Cable operators, telephone systems, and computer hardware and software companies are already investing billions of dollars to enable this drastically improved market for consumers and businesses alike. But in less than a decade, analysts expect the architects of the Information Highway to see their investments returned many-fold, as information services become an industry worth tens of billions of dollars.
Speeding Information to the Consumer
The Information Highway extends far beyond the capabilities and requirements of existing computer networks. It unites information using three basic infrastructure components: storage, network, and access devices. Building and connecting these diverse elements requires cooperation from players in many industries: entertainment, education, retail, information, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, cable, and consumer electronics.
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Information Overload
Businesses alone will create 2.1 trillion pages of unstructured information and documents this year. Thousands of newspapers and magazines, and millions of books are available in print. Millions of professors and doctors are sharing and applying their knowledge around the world. Movies, documentaries and presentations are all available on video or film. But access to libraries, centers of education, and expertise is limited by geography. And access to news is restricted to content selected by editors of newspapers and magazines, as well as by television station programmers.
The sheer volume of all this information available makes it unwieldy and difficult to find and access. And "data mining" - searching through mountains of data for valuable nuggets of information - is inefficient for consumers and businesses.
The Information Highway will give us each an infinitely powerful tool to discover, access, and navigate through information, and overcome information overload.
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Storing the Information
The Information Highway requires facilities that can handle all forms of information: text, images, high-fidelity audio, and full-motion video. The architecture must also be able to manage distribution on an enormous scale while guaranteeing both reliability and privacy. It must work with existing information devices as well as those not even invented yet. And it must be able to adapt as the Information Highway grows from thousands, to millions, to hundreds of millions of users.
Gigantic information warehouses, made up of "media server" hardware and software, will be responsible for managing, storing, and organizing all of the multimedia data for Information Highway services. Media server software will retrieve all kinds of information from this hardware and "serve" it to millions of users, on a host of consumer devices, across many different networks. Media server hardware and software must also provide the management features, reliability, and high performance necessary to keep the traffic moving, and track who pays the tolls.
Security is also essential. Robust media server software will encrypt confidential information, ensuring information providers that their products can't be pirated, and consumers that their privacy will be protected. Perhaps most importantly, media servers must provide all of these features at a very low cost per user, so that everyone will be able to afford access to the information and services.
Connecting the Consumer
The "roadways" allowing information "traffic" to flow from provider to consumer, provider to provider, and consumer to consumer are made up of telephone, radio, television, cable, and satellite networks, and even networks of networks.
Traditionally, these networks are built with copper telephone wire, coaxial cable, satellites, or broadcast and cellular towers. To increase access, speed, and capacity, telecommunications and cable companies are also laying newer networks using thousands of miles of high-capacity fiber optic cable.
All of these diverse networks require sophisticated, interactive consumer communications devices. The challenge is in connecting them in a cohesive system flexible enough to deliver services that are yet to be imagined.
Accessing Information
Information appliances that listen and talk on the network, such as PCs, televisions, telephones, and wireless devices, will give us access to the products and services available on the Information Highway. For example, "set-top boxes," intelligent devices with the power of a small computer, will connect televisions to interactive networks. These devices, which will look like and cost about as much as a mid-range VCR, will enable interactive access to all types of information and all types of services.
Typical homes will have several information appliances, each providing different capabilities. Consumers will eventually be able to connect to the Information Highway from schools, offices, cars, restaurants, and parks, as well as our homes - wherever we happen to be.
Commuting on the Information Highway
There's no doubt that the "content" of interactive services will make or break the new information industry. It has to be useful and interesting to people. It has to be available in ways that are entertaining, simple to use, and better than any other way of accessing the same information or getting the same service.
It has to be easier than driving to the nearest video store to rent a movie. It has to be faster and more effective than calling a customer service representative for information about a hat you saw in a catalog. And it has to be more convenient than casting a vote in person. Services on the Information Highway must give people the most convenient, most desirable, most cost-effective way to interactively discover, access, navigate, and organize exactly the information and services they want and need.
The information and services must also provide a cost-effective and appealing way for businesses to reach their customers, especially the customers most likely to buy something. In some cases, the products and services may be information itself: a movie or a news report, for example. In other cases, the products and services may be information and data about other products and services: a catalog or movie review, for example.
The possibilities for interactive services, or "applications," are endless. Some uses of the technology, such as movies-on-demand, are easy to see. In fact, they're already being developed in numerous locations. And several new types of interactive applications are in the works.
Entertainment on Demand
The Information Highway puts us behind the wheel of the most powerful home entertainment vehicle ever invented. Entertainment on demand will give every viewer total control of what to watch and when to watch it. Thousands of movies, games, music videos, documentaries, soap opera episodes, concerts, and sports events will all be available instantly, 24 hours a day.
Entertainment on demand will be nothing like "ordering" a program today. We won't have to wait to see anything, or miss a single second of a show, because we'll be able to start and stop it, rewind and fast forward it, and find out anything we want to know about it, anytime, anywhere. Say you want to know what other films were made by a particular director, or the Academy Award-winning films of 1991, it will be as easy as a click of a button.
With a virtually unlimited market spanning the globe, entertainment on demand brings a wealth of opportunities to businesses on the Information Highway. And while analysts often cite it as the service that will entice consumers into making the initial investment, it is truly only the beginning for both consumers and businesses in the Information Age.
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A Single, Personal Channel
Even with the fabled "500 channels" of television, we'd be limited to watching what station programmers want to broadcast. No one has the time to surf 500 channels. What each viewer needs is the ability to interactively choose what we want from every available channel, and combine it in a single custom channel that meets our own individual needs and preferences.
To get a handle on such an enormous variety of choices, we will be able to tell the system what we like and what we don't like. In return, we'll receive a customized personal electronic menu of entertainment options: Katharine Hepburn movie classics, specific episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the latest G-rated Disney movies, new multiuser interactive games, or music programming that doesn't include disco.
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The Global Electronic Classroom
The Information Highway promises to democratize information and profoundly affect the way we educate our children and ourselves. Educational institutions will tap vast stores of information in university, public, and private libraries through familiar devices such as televisions, personal computers, and video game systems. Schools across the country and around the world will connect with each other, so children can learn firsthand about life in other regions.
"Distance learning" will allow experts to link up with classrooms, teaching subjects otherwise unavailable. Remote cameras and other devices will enable students to step out of the classroom to participate in expeditions and experiments. With all boundaries removed, creative educators will be free to explore new ways of teaching and motivating students at all levels, from pre-school education to graduate studies at colleges and universities.
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Making Learning Fun
The Information Highway's promise for education can already be seen in a few experiments underway around the country. The Library of Congress' American Memory Project (AMP) already offers electronic access to collections of key historical documents - including manuscripts, films, photos, political cartoons, and speeches - through telecommunications networks. At elementary schools in Menlo Park and Woodside, CA, students link up with each other, and with their counterparts in Japan, to share information, ideas, and cultures. And the International Arctic Project involves more than 200 schools - in nine countries and 29 U.S. states - in an Arctic expedition led by explorer Will Steger.
The Information Highway will makes these kinds of services available to everyone.
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Interactive education services will also provide businesses with cost-effective methods of providing information, training, and education to employees for both enrichment and advancement. Without having to maintain libraries and training staff onsite, or pay for expensive offsite services, we can use the Information Highway to reduce the cost of running a successful business.
Interactive Shopping
The Information Highway will transform retail merchandising. Customers everywhere will buy goods from anywhere in a global market that is always open for real-time, interactive, "hands-on" shopping. Whether it's Harrods in London, or Macy's in New York, we'll be able to literally browse the merchandise online, with the aid of two-way video and helpful real or electronic salespeople. Shoppers will be able to call up a video explaining how certain garments were made, a magazine article outlining "what's hot and what's not," or an interview with a new French designer.
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A Shopping Experience
If you need a new sweater, you don't have to leave the house, or resort to catalog shopping. At your favorite online store, you can ask a salesperson for assistance or look through all the merchandise on your own. Say you don't know if you want cashmere or wool, cardigan or pullover, classic or loose fit. Just choose a model with a physique resembling yours, and have him or her try them all on. You'll be able to "see" it in the right color, texture, and style. When you've found the perfect sweater, just have it shipped directly to you.
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The burgeoning home shopping industry now grosses more than $100 billion a year. Most of it is mail-order, with fast-growing markets for cable and online shopping services. Based on the immense popularity of current non-interactive shopping services, interactive shopping and other retail services will be a huge hit.
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Virtual Groceries
When it comes to groceries, customers may want to compare actual packages rather than simply choose from a list. Companies are already working to bring multimedia capabilities to interactive grocery shopping so that customers can actually "see" supermarket aisles and choose exactly what they want.
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Telemedicine around the Globe
The Information Highway will forever alter the way we receive and manage our medical care. By sharing information, health care professionals will leverage scarce resources to bring more advanced services to more patients at lower cost.
The Information Highway will give health care a new level of convenience. Expectant mothers, for example, will be able to join prenatal care classes and childbirth education seminars via two-way links from homes, offices, or schools. With the help of special devices, people with special needs will gain direct access to health services they might not have been able to access in the past. Doctors and nurses will use two-way video links to diagnose, treat, and monitor patients online - saving millions of unnecessary office visits each year, and focusing medical resources where they're needed most.
The more efficient use of medical resources and the reduced cost of providing care will benefit businesses, as well as their employees. Lower-cost medical care will help businesses reduce the skyrocketing expenses required for providing basic benefits packages to employees, increasing the profitability of the businesses.
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Long-Distance Treatment
Via the Information Highway, CAT scans taken at a local hospital can be sent to experts at medical centers anywhere in the world. The CAT scan is converted to ones and zeroes, compressed, and transmitted across the network. Upon receiving the CAT scan image, the experts can confer electronically. And they can videoconference with the patient to explain the results.
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Custom News Reporting
"Newspapers" of the future will let us customize our own one-of-a-kind edition and interact with it - calling up more text, diagrams, or video clips about stories of interest. These personalized gazettes will be accessible from our favorite information device: a home entertainment system via a TV and set-top box, a personal or laptop computer, or a handheld personal digital assistant.
With customers in control, advertisers will have to rethink what to sell, how to sell it, and how to make consumers pay attention. In return, they'll get better demographic information than ever before. Clever interactive ads will entice us to "experience" test-driving a car, the look and feel of a new line of clothing, or the view from a hotel room in Tahiti.
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Stay Current, Wherever You Are
Say you grew up in Phoenix, live in Washington, D.C., and travel frequently to London. Your personal "newspaper" may be based on The Washington Post, but include video clips from CNN, interactive charts from The Wall Street Journal, local sports photos from The Phoenix Sun, and theater and entertainment previews from The London Times.
You'll also be able to monitor traffic, weather, and airline schedules when you travel.
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Building an Industry for the Information Highway
As consumers, the Information Highway will mean a convenient, interactive, totally personalized way to gather information about the things that interest us. As businesses and service and network providers, the Information Highway already presents an enormous opportunity to secure success for our companies as we learn to operate in the Information Age.
It's undeniable that the Information Highway has the potential to truly revolutionize society, culture, and daily life when it is extended to reach around the globe. But there is still a great deal of uncertainty about how anyone will make money doing it.
New business models will need to be defined to allow companies to profitably offer services on the Information Highway. And to make it a robust business for everyone, the companies working to architect the Information Highway will have to cooperate on every level, and build partnerships that surpass anything they've done before.
The billions of dollars being invested in building the infrastructure and applications will be returned many-fold over the next couple of decades. And the service and application providers that create the most innovative, high-quality services, and give customers the most value for their money, are the most likely to succeed in what is sure to be a fiercely competitive industry.
Oracle - Enabling the Information Age
Drawing on nearly two decades of experience in solving complex, critical information management challenges, Oracle has developed the software that will enable consumers and businesses to come full-speed into the Information Age. With revolutionary new ways to collect and distribute information, this software breaks new ground, and lays the foundation on which the Information Highway will be built.
Dozens of innovative companies, like Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, BT (formerly British Telecom), and U S West are already using Oracle solutions to design and develop interactive television and multimedia service networks for community-based consumer trials and initial deployments.
Oracle Media Solutions
Oracle Media solutions provide complete, end-to-end software and services for the Information Highway, from the back-end media server software to the front-end development tools for creating interactive, multimedia applications. The Oracle Media suite of software and services includes Oracle Media Server, Oracle Media Smart Services, Oracle Media Net, and Oracle Media Objects.
Oracle Media Server is a digital "multimedia library" that stores, retrieves, and manages all forms of information: video, audio, images, and text.
Oracle Media Smart Services is a prepackaged suite of application services and application programming interfaces that makes developing portable interactive multimedia applications easier and faster.
Oracle Media Net connects interactive consumer devices to the Oracle Media Server multimedia library. It hides the complexity of various phone, satellite, and cable networks and transparently delivers the information to the set-top box, PC, or other device.
Oracle Media Objects is a powerful, easy-to-use cross-platform tool that developers can use to build a wide range of interactive, multimedia applications for the Information Highway.
In addition to Oracle Media software, Oracle created the Oracle Emerging Technologies Consulting Group to help network, application, and information providers develop, integrate, and deploy high-quality interactive multimedia services.
The Power of Information
As they evolve, the information and services on the Information Highway will do more than bring favorite entertainment and emporiums into our homes. They will enhance and promote community. They will educate educators and parents, as well as children. They will allow health care professionals to respond more quickly and expertly to emergencies. More than ever before, information technology holds the potential not only to expand the global economy, but also to improve society around the world.
Once again, we are empowered by information in a new Information Age.
To find out more about how Oracle is uniquely qualified to enable the Information Age, ask your nearest Oracle representative for a copy of the brochure entitled "Oracle Media Solutions - Enabling the Information Age," or call us directly at 415.506.7000.
Oracle is a registered trademark, and Oracle Media Server, Oracle Media Smart Services, Oracle Media Net, Oracle Media Objects, and Oracle Emerging Technologies Consulting Group are trademarks, of Oracle Corporation.
All other company and product names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
