The Global Network Infrastructure (GNI) is the vision for an open, information-oriented society where people around the globe share information via an infrastructure of interconnected computers, information services and information repositories. The GNI, otherwise called the "Net," is comprised of a global IP network with network computers and core network services. The Net provides essential communications and distributed computing capabilities upon which the Global Information Infrastructure and ubiquitous geospatial data and geoprocessing depends.

The Net encompasses the Internet and enterprise-oriented intranets and extranets. The Internet forms the backbone for interconnectivity and communications between a global network of distributed computers and network appliances. Intranets and extranets extend the reach of the Net and fulfill specialized communications and distributed computing needs for enterprises and enterprise clusters (e.g. a supply chain), and through gateways, provide enterprises access to the Internet.

The Global Network Infrastructure is rapidly evolving to meet the increasing demands of a rapidly growing population of users, with expanding needs for more sophisticated applications, like geoprocessing.

The Net is rapidly expanding to meet anticipated demand. Communications providers have made the expansion of the global IP network a top priority in their growth plans. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are enabling widespread access to the Net and are providing consumers and businesses with basic applications like email, Web hosting and other core network services.

A multitude of service providers, integrators, application and content (data) providers are dependent on the Net. They are building and providing the services and applications to support communications, information exchange, transaction processing and other crucial services and applications to consumers, businesses and governments. Notable among these are the innovative, rapidly expanding "portals" to the Net, which are primarily oriented towards consumer services, but are rapidly expanding into the small business arena.

Appliances and high-speed wireless networks

An embedded device is a hardware appliance with an embedded microprocessor, some memory (but no hard disk!) and a relatively specialized set of functions. Examples of embedded devices include cell phones, GPS receivers, microwave ovens, VCRs, pagers, clocks, and printers. Although the personal computer has embedded microprocessors, it is generally not considered an embedded device because it doesn’t have a focused function.

To be truly useful, appliances must also be interconnected. The other somewhat obvious, but no less significant trend, is the proliferation of high-speed, often wireless, network infrastructures. High-speed backbones are being built at a frenetic pace. High bandwidth connections to the home are available today. There is little doubt that the network environment will become faster and more accessible in the coming years.

So the trend in hardware is toward the proliferation of everyday devices, enhanced with embedded processors and interconnected networks. Over time, the "smarter" environment these appliances and networks enable promises fundamental changes in how we will do things at work, home and play. These trends will have far reaching influence on the market for geospatial technology.

Components

Components are pre-developed pieces of application code that can be assembled into working application systems. They are typically deployed independently, often by third party application systems developers. Components conform to contracts, called interfaces, which define their behavior and relationships to other components. A component exposes its semantics (properties, methods and events) to "builder tools" and other components, via its interface.

But components are nothing without a framework in which they can interconnect and interoperate. A software component model is a framework (or at least a specification) for how to develop reusable software components and how these components can communicate with each other. Of course, networks are a critical part of the component framework.

Component frameworks enable developers to rapidly and flexibly hook together existing components. Components enable rapid development because existing codebase can be easily reused (or purchased from an independent source) and integrated in a third-party development environment. Component developers also benefit from this type of development because they can reuse existing components, obtaining a consistent interface to standard system facilities during development of their own components. Instead of building an entire application from scratch, you build an application by hooking together existing legacy and new third-party components. Component-based software development saves time, money and effort and produces more consistent, reliable applications.

Components are where it’s at! But not all components are created equal. In Java-land there are JavaBean components and there are Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) components.

Open Standards

Open standards benefit consumers by ensuring that superior technology, connectivity and interoperability are important factors in the marketplace. Open standards raise the bar for vendors to deliver superior products because, if they don’t, customers will be able to easily switch to a competing vendor’s product. In the world of open standards, no single vendor can easily "own the customer."

As long as standards are in the public domain, there are more opportunities for innovation and greater competition. Vendors have a harder time imposing high prices and expensive upgrade cycles on their customers. Open standards tend to level the playing field.

Vendors reap the benefits of open standards that "grow the market" for their products. Open standards have enabled extremely profitable and sustained growth for Internet, intranet, extranet and e-commerce markets through the 1990s. Vendors that support open standards benefit from the resulting increased demand for their products. Savvy vendors reap large rewards by developing and adopting standards that add value to their specific areas of technology, and then grabbing market share by being the first to market with these new capabilities.