All web or what?

How web technologies are permeating corporate IT

Prof Dr Thorsten Riemke-Gurzki
Published in: DiALOG - THE MAGAZINE FOR DIGITAL CHANGE | 2021

Yes, it did exist: The time before the web. Really, way back. Back when everything was better and IT was still electronic data processing. And when mid-range computing meant mid-range data technology. And software development was complex and expensive. In the mid-90s, the era of client/server computing was proclaimed. A completely new concept was to conquer the IT world and decentralise the infrastructure. In his 1994 Comdex keynote speech, Bill Gates showed the world what he thought the world would look like in 2005. But wait a minute! There was a small, insignificant event before that. And it was exactly where some people suspect that small black holes will be created that will eventually eat our earth for good. That's right: in Switzerland at the CERN nuclear research centre. This is where Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau invented and developed a distributed hypermedia system to improve knowledge management. Documents linked to other documents and distributed across several computers. As the documents were networked with each other, it was initially called Mesh, but soon became WorldWideWeb. At that time it was actually still without spaces.

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And that was a client/server system. The idea quickly spread around the world in the university and research landscape and soon the first multimedia offerings were added. Something like the Trojan Room Coffee Machine webcam, which showed the fill level of a coffee machine at the University of Cambridge between 1993 and 2001. Incidentally, this was not even technically possible before, as the young World Wide Web (now with spaces) simply did not recognise images at first. The university's coffee website is legendary and is a milestone that anyone who was around at the time will recognise. But it was no gag. It was a real application that brought real benefits: all employees could see the fill level of the pot at any time. And when the pot was visibly empty in the webcam, they could go to the room and selflessly make new coffee for their colleagues. Or something like that. The first forays into e-business soon followed. For example, a pizzeria that offered an online ordering page. The order consisted of a long text form, which today's Wizard-accustomed users would have lost all vigour and rated the website negatively on Google, which had not yet been invented. But the serious idea at CERN and the many playful experiments have developed over the course of more than three decades into one of the largest sources of knowledge and - if you like - the largest application in the world. Today, web technologies form the basis for all kinds of services on the Internet. Web technologies have also become indispensable in business use. The first thing that comes into play here is, of course, the intranet. But the intranet today is more than just an information platform.

Yes, it did exist: The time before the web. Back when everything was better and IT was still electronic data processing.


The web-based digital workplace should provide employees with all the tools they need for their daily work. A vision that is increasingly becoming reality. Web technology enables a reduction of software on employees' desktop computers and a certain independence from operating systems. This means that operating systems traditionally defined as "set" can be replaced. From the point of view of many IT departments, the intranet (or digital workplace) is an infrastructure component that allows applications to be developed quickly and easily and made available within the company. Style guides and basic functions such as authentication already exist there and do not need to be reinvented. And another practical advantage: there are many well-trained specialists for web applications. Web development is efficient.

In a technical lecture in the early 2010s, I heard the statement: "Forget the web. The web is dead. Everything is an app." Dead as a doornail, you might have thought. Today, apps play a major role, of course, but mobile websites are indispensable. Many apps are created with cross-platform frameworks that are based on web technologies. The apps developed with these frameworks then run natively on Google's Android and Apple's iOS. The familiar web technologies therefore also create a bridge here that other development platforms struggle with. And then there is the classic desktop application. Here too, the trend is towards cross-platform development, e.g. for Windows, Mac and Linux. This is realised in the traditional way with an established programming language of choice and a cross-platform framework for the user interface. Or the application can be realised using web technologies. As a server-based application or as an installable desktop application. The latter is possible with the Electron framework. The application is developed with web technologies and then delivered packaged with a browser. This is not immediately apparent to the user without further specialist knowledge. Here too, web technologies form the basis for cross-platform applications. And you may already be using web technologies on your desktop without realising it: Skype, Slack, Microsoft Teams are just a few examples of many. Under the bonnet: web. The question for the future is therefore: all web or what? The question is actually not easy to answer. Everything will certainly not be able to become "web" because it offers little or no technical advantages. The more meaningless the use of a specific operating system becomes, the more system-independent the requirement is, the more important cross-platform technologies become for development. And web technologies already offer all of this today. Thank you Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau. What would we do today without the web and web technologies?

Prof Dr Thorsten Riemke-Gurzki is a professor of web technologies, in particular company portals/intranets and usability. He researches and teaches on the Online Media Management programme at Stuttgart Media University. He previously worked as a consultant for SAP Germany and Fraunhofer IAO, among others.