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Information technology is approaching the limitations of the existing hardware infrastructure and entering an age of compound and hybrid technologies. On a global level, organizational enterprise and new entrants are evaluating system and application software in relation to their business model, the needs of clients and the economics associated with going directly to the next generation of software technology. Trends in the industry indicate that the capabilities of the software will be dependent upon international standards, telecommunications infrastructure, and open source code.

Unlike the investment in proprietary software infrastructure which has been developed and implemented over a 50 year period as part of the modern era of data processing, these new technologies, in many situations have not been battle tested, and may not be categorically or immediately better than a web-enabling and retrofitting of an existing software infrastructure. Accordingly, the selection of the appropriate combination of software and accompanying business decisions will be complex and require careful examination of data and factual information in relation to anticipating advancements in a global economy. The consensus among industry leaders is that the immense number of individuals, a billion plus, who will be connecting to and joining the world wide web for the first time in the immediate future, will be a significant demographic component of any long-term strategy.

In the aggregate, the parameters for evaluating and implementing coherent short and long term strategies are reasonably well defined. IBM mainframes are the repository for immense amounts of data and web browsers and possibly software as a service will be the connectivity and presentation software to computing workstations. The products offered by the major hardware, software and Internet service companies - Intel, AMD, Dell, Hewlet-Packard, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Verisign - to name a few, will have a significant role in creating the next generation of IT infrastructure. The appropriate mix of hardware, software, and service technologies will be determined by a combination of budgetary constraints, competitive forces in the market, and international regulations imposed by governing bodies. The degree of success will be highly dependent upon the ability of organizational enterprise to educate and train its employees to migrate, develop, and maintain its computer systems.