I anticipate that the next few years will see deeper penetration of this technology into the marketplace and that the lower-end products will catch up to the higher-end products in terms of sophistication, 3D rendering, multimedia management, etc. Meanwhile, the high-end products will focus more on integration with 3^rd party applications such as CAD applications, and ERP systems.

Users of the technology have experimented with deployment of the technology on the internet for customer use, but this has been limited to the simplest products for a broad consumer market. I expect that manufacturers will increasingly implement the technology at key customers’ locations and thereby allow customers to control the input and to submit electronic orders.

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Last modified: November 03, 1997