in4com stands for "Industrial Integration In Information and Communications" - the notion dates back to the turn of the century when 3G was widely introduced, UMTS blinked on the horizon, and a tremendous hype around communications and the integration with information technologies started off. As we know now, this was just the initial hype of many more which followed. The need for an industrial approach to the use of IT and communications has never been bigger than today - we assume in 10 years from now this will still be true.
What has changed (and continues changing) is the role of data, where they come from, who is allowed to use them, and who is owning them. Many of today's services are based on the access to a wealth of data and their integration. The analysis of road conditions, map quality, financial transaction optimization, sales campaigns, farming, production planning - all these services are unthinkable without the access to mass data and their analysis. With the introduction of smartphones, the wide deployment of camaras and other sensors, we amass roughly 272 Terabyte of data in 2015 per second. And with the continuous improvement of software, hardware and sensor technology this number is expected to grow to an unimaginable size of 40.026 Exabyte/year (= 40.000 * 1018 Byte) by 2020. In many cases every one of us is contributing to this data or can be affected by the use of this data - positively and negatively.
Unfortunately, legislation and the evolution of security technologies have not evolved at the same pace. This is why digital civil rights (Digital User Rights - more than a game) as well as Data Sovereignty (Data Sovereignty - Why Do We Give It Up?) are placed into spotlight on this web site. We want to drive forward relevant discussions, collect facts, and put them into perspective. A moderated forum will be made available for exchange of arguments.
