1998 to 2008

I got my under grad degree in 1997 and an year later, my alma mater published a directory of all alumni. Just as any good directory, they had included all known public contact information of alumni. I laid my hands on it recently and realized that the directory did not have any email addresses on there! Cut to 10 years hence. I do not know of any business or person who does not provide email as a contact mechanism. In fact for many transactional relations, people qualify their contact info by adding a line - "best way to contact me would be email" or "just email me and I will be sure to respond quick". Thats how much has that changed. Cut to another area of life. Think B2B IT sales. I remember distinctly that in 1997, when I was stepping into the industry, everything in IT was considered competitive advantage or a means of securing markets sooner etc. IT was core to a good business strategy. Circa 2008, IT is very core to business strategy, however, I will be naive to think that its positioning has not changed. For one, skills have become ubiquitous. In other words, if an IT strategy has been formulated, it is very easy to get it executed. Remember this talk is all in relation to how it was in 1997. For the very act of strategy formulation, there are plenty of companies who are able to do great IT strategy formulation. Some are large and purport to be one stop shops for entire IT function. Others slice and dice the market and specialize in very specific corners of the market. But, there is major proliferation. How will this play out in the future? In other words, just as email addresses and other personal usage of Internet becomes so ubiquitous, what else in the B2B world will the Internet commoditize?