Design and Prototyping
from Internet Business
The most pervasive impact of computing on how we work is how easy it makes
it to ask 'what if?' and almost instantly see the effect of those changes.
It is expected that the application of this ability to the configuration
of complex purchases will become a major justification for utilising the
Internet for Retailing of Goods and Services
Such functionality generally requires a significant amount of programming
in some or other scripting or 'glue' language, although this is not generally
as arduous a task as the kind of component and platform software development
discussed in an earlier section[1]. The capacity to do this level of glue
programming can also provide a valuable service to those providing Organisation/Work
Group Services or Information Access.
At this early stage in the commercial exploitation of the Internet, the
choice of glue languages is wide open, depending both on the various combinations
of host and client hardware architectures and capabilities, and on application
by application judgement as to what functionality should be provided at
the host and what at the client. Given the number of product offerings and
combinations, it is expected to be quite some time before any standard approach
emerges to these issues. Meanwhile it should be cost effective for some
businesses to specialise in these areas by keeping their knowledge up to
date and by catering for the Design and Prototyping needs of a number of
other service providers.
As with other areas in which professional expertise is the primary product,
the cost of getting suitably qualified and experienced professionals onto
the Net is only around $20,000 per person. In running a Design and Prototyping
business, the other consideration will be the proportion of time needed
to be spent monitoring both the relevant technological developments and
Net-based business activities. While those demands are certain to be high,
it is also the kind of area in which a competent professional will be able
to be billed at over $200 per hour, giving the prospect of paying $100,000
salary and retaining $100,000 margin by billing an average of 20 hours per
week.
[1] see Equipment and Software