The technology breakthrough that enabled the modern computer occurred 60 years ago when researchers at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey created the first working transistor on December 16, 1947. William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain received a well-deserved Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 for their groundbreaking work in transistors.

What started with one transistor has grown at an astonishing rate. The Semiconductor Industry Association estimates that in 2008, a total of 6 quintillion transistors will be manufactured (that's a six followed by 18 zeroes), an amount equal to 900 million transistors for every person on Earth. To see this growth in transistors in action, consider the steady evolution of Intel's semiconductors. In 1978, its wildly popular 8086 processor contained 29,000 transistors. The first Pentium processor was introduced by Intel in 1993, with 3.1 million transistors. In 2007, each of Intel's Zeon Quad-Core processors contained 820 million transistors.

The worldwide market for information and communications technologies and services (ICT) was estimated at more than $3 trillion in 2006, and will grow to about $4 trillion in 2009 (according to data developed by Global Insight, Inc. as published by WITSA, the World Information Technology and Services Alliance). The 2006 figure includes about $1.57 trillion for the communications segment, with the balance represented in the computer segments of: $537 billion for hardware, $317 billion for software and $730 billion for computer services.

Analysts at technology research firm IDC estimate global 2006 spending on software, hardware and IT services at a lower number of $1.16 trillion in 2006, growing to $1.48 trillion in 2010. Their figures do not include the communications segment.

Growth in the InfoTech sector picked up considerably in 2004-2005, as the global economy rebounded from the recession of the early 2000s and organizations increased IT budgets in order to purchase new systems, software and services. Growth slowed to about 6% in 2006, and most analysts were forecasting a 5% to 6% global growth rate in 2007.

For 2008, fears of a global economic slowdown will dampen hardware and software sector growth. Nonetheless, sales through 2007 were strong for such items as notebook computers (a sector in which prices have dropped dramatically), along with advanced, Internet-enabled cell phones with color screens, electronic game players, MP3 music players, digital cameras, servers and many other types of advanced consumer and business electronics.

Worldwide sales of semiconductor chips grew to about $255 billion in 2007, thanks to very strong demand from makers of everything from iPods to cell phones to PCs. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, the industry had sold $233 billion through November 2007.

Gartner estimated growth in the global PC market at 13.7% for 2007 (with 271.2 million PCs sold, including 64.2 million in the U.S.). It forecasts 11.6% growth for 2008. In the U.S., the market for hardware was about $148.4 billion in 2007, while software was approximately $131.9 billion and computer services were about $307.4 billion, according to Plunkett Research estimates.

The InfoTech industry is galloping into globalization at a very rapid rate. Research, development and manufacturing of components and completed systems have grown quickly in the labs and manufacturing plants of India, China, Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia, among other lands. Computer services continue to move offshore quickly, particularly to the tech centers of India.

While the 1970s and 1980s will be remembered as the "Information Age," and the 1990s will undoubtedly be singled out in history as the beginning of the "Internet Age," the first decades of the 21st Century may become the "Broadband Age" or, even better said, the "Convergence Age." The advent of the networked computer was truly revolutionary in terms of information processing, data sharing and data storage. In the '90s, the Internet was even more revolutionary in terms of communications and furthering the progress of data sharing, from the personal level to the global enterprise level.

Today, broadband sources such as Fiber-to-the-premises, Wi-Fi and cable modems provide high-speed access to information and media, creating an "always-on" environment for many users. The result is a widespread convergence of entertainment, telephony and computerized information: data, voice and video, delivered to a rapidly evolving array of Internet appliances, PDAs, wireless devices (including cellular telephones) and desktop computers. This will fuel the next era of growth. Broadband access has been installed in enough U.S. households and businesses (about 90 million as 2007 ended) to create a true mass market, fueling demand for new Internet-delivered services, information and entertainment.

The advent of the Convergence Age is leading to a steady evolution in the way we access and utilize software applications. On the consumer side, widespread access to fast Internet lines has created a boom in user-generated content (such as Flikr, YouTube and Wikipedia); social networking (such as Facebook and MySpace); as well as TV and movies delivered via the Internet. On the business side, the Convergence Age is leading to rapid adoption of Software as a Service. That is, the delivery of sophisticated software applications by remote servers that are accessed via the Internet, as opposed to software that is installed locally by its users (such as Salesforce and Microsoft's Windows Live). On the technology side, the Convergence Age is leading to booming growth in computing power that is distributed over large numbers of small servers, now referred to as "Cloud Computing".

The promise of the Convergence Age-the delivery of an entire universe of information and entertainment to PCs and mobile devices, on-demand with the click of a mouse-is much closer than it was a mere 24 months ago. Consumers are swarming to new and enhanced products and services, such as the iPod, which has sold more than 100 million units as of April 2007, and the iTunes download store, which had sold more than 3 billion songs, 100 million TV shows and 2 million feature-length movies by late 2007.

Over the next five to ten years, significant groundbreaking products will be introduced in areas such as high-density storage, artificial intelligence, optical switches and networking technologies and advances will be made in quantum computing. (See "The Future: Pervasive Computing, Complete Mobility Will Be Standard".)

The InfoTech revolution continues in the office as well as in the home. The U.S. workforce totals more than 150 million people. Microsoft recently estimated that there are 40 million "knowledge workers" in the U.S. A large majority of the workforce uses a computer of some type on the job daily, in every conceivable application-from receptionists answering computerized telephone systems to cashiers ringing up sales at Wal-Mart on registers that are tied into vast computerized databases. This is the InfoTech revolution at work, moving voice, video and data through the air and over phone lines, driving productivity ahead at rates that we do not yet know how to calculate. Our ability to utilize technology effectively is finally catching up to our ability to create the technologies themselves. We're finding more and more uses for computers with increased processing speed, increased memory capacity, interfaces that are friendly and easy-to-use and software created to speed up virtually every task known to man. Cheaper, faster chips and more powerful software will continue to enter the market at blinding speed.

InfoTech continues to create new efficiency-creating possibilities on a continual basis. Now, RFID (radio frequency ID tagging, a method of digitally identifying and tracking each individual item of merchandise) promises to revolutionize logistics and drive InfoTech industry revenues even higher.

The health care industry is undergoing a technology revolution of its own. Patient records are going digital in standardized formats, and RFID is starting to make hospital inventories more manageable.

For businesses, the stark realities of global competition are fueling investments in InfoTech. Demands from customers for better service, lower prices, higher quality and more depth of inventory are mercilessly pushing companies to achieve efficient re-stocking, higher productivity and faster, more thorough management information. These demands will continue to intensify, partly because of globalization.

The solutions are arising from InfoTech channels: vast computer networks that speed information around the globe; e-mail, instant messaging, collaboration software and improved systems for real-time communication between branches, customers and headquarters; software with the power to call up answers to complex questions by delving deep into databases; satellites that are beginning to clutter the skies; and clear fiber-optic cables that carry tens of thousands of streams of data across minuscule beams of light. Businesses are paving the paths to their futures with dollars invested in InfoTech because: 1) substantial productivity gains are possible; 2) the relative cost of the technology itself has plummeted while its power has multiplied; and 3) competitive pressures leave them no choice.