Recombinant Communications Manifesto: Piecing Together the Disaggregated Infrastructure

Recombinant Communications (RC) captures a simple idea: splice together the basic materials of today's communication and service delivery infrastructure with new software elements (using RESTful programming environments) and introduce new services over a multiplicity of devices. The result of RC is a major opportunity for a fast-growing community of technology providers, application developers and integrators, fueling spending on software, services and "appliances" that fulfill on the Internet's promise to support a better user experience for mobility, commerce, communication and collaboration.

In my fifteen minutes, I'll present four major factors: expansion of broadband IP (both wireline and wireless), growth of the mobile user population, mature standards for Web services (around HTML, HTTP, XML and even Java) and mature, open API's (for business processes and data that reside in enterprise IT as well as more public clouds) that drive RC development.

The manifesto outlines some specific objectives:

Extend more of the Web to mobile devices

Retool the contact center experience

Turn networks into "Smart Pipes" (at least around the edges)

Provide "No Rest for the RESTful" by creating full-employment for app developers and solutions providers

I'll close with a forecast of the market potential for spending on enterprise infrastructure, service provider infrastructure, integration services and recombinant apps exceeding $20 billion annually over the next five years.