BONN and ESCHBORN, Germany, December 15, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Information and telecommunications technology (ICT) will be found in almost all products by the year 2032. At the same time, the related added value areas will change: end customer services from ICT providers will melt into those from other industries. This is the prediction made by the ICT management consultancy Detecon in its new opinion paper, "Think 2032!" The future belongs to horizontally integrated ICT companies which concentrate either on business areas oriented to the market and service or on business areas oriented to the infrastructure.

In 2032, the German ICT managers who are today 45 will be wrapping up their careers. By that time, the ICT market and applications will have undergone a fundamental transformation. The massive quantities of collected and available information will have extended its reach into every imaginable area of our lives. Cars networked with one another, intelligently managed power networks and houses, films in holograph format, or body implants which send medical data to portable devices are just some of the examples. ICT will be omnipresent - in our daily lives as well as in the work world. ICT will become a decisive production factor in almost all industries and, more and more, will also be a key differentiation factor. The digitalization of goods and services will eliminate the boundaries between industries so that horizontally integrated ICT solutions and ICT embedded in products will dominate the end customer market.

Detecon predicts that new added value sectors will appear on the expanded ICT market by 2032, such as the sector consumer-ICT mediation (CIM) where providers with an excellent reputation will use intelligent smart agents to handle the search for information and the selection of products and services for consumers as well as other tasks.

The ICT value creation will more and more concentrate on market- and service-oriented business areas (business as a service) or services related to the infrastructure (infrastructure as a service). "Successful business as a service must be able to support the set-up of business networks which are quickly created and just as quickly dissolved, making available a kind of flexible business operating system," explains Lars Theobaldt, Managing Partner at Detecon and one of the authors of the Detecon opinion paper.

The dominant force in the business sector infrastructure as a service will be ICT companies which can rely on international advantages of size. "Virtually no provider will be capable of financing the rising infrastructure demand alone. So an organizational structure which can cooperate ad hoc with a large number of partners will become all the more important," says Dr. Karl-Michael Henneking, member of the Detecon Executive Board and head of the division "Strategy and Marketing". "The ability to manage complex wholesale business models will be absolutely critical for success in this case." According to Detecon, infrastructure services in 2032 will be performed on three added value levels: wireless and wired access technologies with very large bandwidths, just as in the past; complex managed services, e.g., for smart cities; or highly specialized infrastructures such as robot parks and sensor networks.

The opinion paper "Think 2032!" can be downloaded by logging onto http://www.detecon.com/ICT2032.

Detecon International GmbH

Detecon is one of the world's leading consulting companies for ICT management consulting. Our services focus on consulting and implementation solutions which are derived from the use of information and communications technology (ICT). They encompass classic strategy and organization consulting as well as the planning and implementation of complex, technological ICT architectures and applications. Detecon's expertise bundles the knowledge from the successful conclusion of management and ICT consulting projects in more than 160 countries. Detecon is a subsidiary of T-Systems International, the key account brand of Deutsche Telekom.

For additional information, go to: http://www.detecon.com info@detecon.com Press Contact Detecon International GmbH Gerhard Auer Oberkasseler Strasse 2 D-53227 Bonn Phone: (+49-228)700-1013 Fax: (+49-228)700-1017 e-Mail: gerhard.auer@detecon.com http://www.detecon.com