Digitizing of Current Knowledge in Vertical Channels. Since the late 1990s, textbook and trade book publishers, university presses, association presses, and other enterprises have been digitizing their existing knowledge resources. They have used these digital assets to extend and complement their print offerings and to anticipate fully virtual products. The repurposing of existing content in e-learning formats has been given a major stimulus by new defense contracts through the U.S. Defense Department’s ADL initiative. The size of this opportunity is US $48 million today and is expected to grow to over $300 million by 2003. The Association of American Publishers has sponsored a workshop in conjunction with the Learning Objects Network (LON) to explore how to leverage these opportunities. Over the next decade, repurposing content for e-learning through vertical publisher channels will be a major market opportunity.

Someday, objects will have wide-ranging and deep conversations with other objects, and their silent form of commerce will be the rule.

Glover T. Ferguson

Emergence of Horizontal Marketplaces. The multi-enterprise repositories described in Chapter 4 — ARL’s Scholar’s Portal, MERLOT, RDN, SMETE, SMC, and commercial entities like Learning Content eXchange, XanEdu, and LON — are harbingers of non-profit and for-profit marketplaces that will emerge to slice across current vertical channels. Between 2002 and 2005, we expect a number of these marketplaces to evolve from existing ventures or enter the marketplace afresh. If properly constituted and funded, these marketplaces could achieve economic viability by 2005–2006 (also with the right business model). They could achieve widespread market penetration by 2008–2009.

Infrastructures, Processes,
Capabilities and Cultures

Most of the technologies necessary to support enterprise application infrastructures and solutions, and e-knowledge ecologies are available in current or emerging generations of products, services, and solutions. What remains to happen is widespread deployment and enterprise adaptation. The table on the following page summarizes the timeframes for developing enterprise infrastructures and knowledge ecologies necessary to support e-knowledge.

Portalized Experience Layer Develops. Most enterprises have deployed portal and intranet capabilities and are refining them as platforms for interacting with their stakeholders. Early, proprietary portal products will have been replaced by interoperable, low-cost portal solutions by 2003–2004. This expeditionary process will then continue. By 2004–2005, the evolution of portals should have proceeded to the point where proof-of-concept is achieved of the “killer app:” the experience gateway through which stakeholders will experience the products, services, and knowledge the enterprise has to offer.

Fusion of Mission Critical Applications. Most industries have demonstrated the “fusion” of mission critical applications though the enterprise portal/intranet. For example, in higher education, the full integration of learning management, content management, and ERP, through the enterprise portal, has been achieved through SCT’s Banner product in conjunction with WebCT and CampusPipeline. In the association industry, associations such as the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) have fused their “body of knowledge,” e-learning, and communities of practice into a singular experience available to members and other stakeholders through the enterprise portal. Government and corporate demonstrations of this proof-of-concept are too numerous to recount.