Meet John. He's the consultant from the Big One, the last remnant of a set of international consulting firms that once were dubbed the Big Eight. But don't think that the consulting industry has shrunk. To the contrary: By now, 2010, John and the other 80,000 professionals on the Big One team compete ferociously with hundreds of consulting firms from India, China, Russia, Poland, and elsewhere. The services industry has become the largest economic engine in the world, dwarfing manufacturing, agriculture, and everything that came before.

You'll notice that John doesn't look the way top-tier consultants used to look when making a call. For one thing, he doesn't carry a briefcase. He doesn't even carry a laptop computer. Remember them, those bulky rectangles the size of
a two-inch-thick stack of copies of TIME magazine? A well-heeled consultant like John wouldn't be caught dead lugging one of those around. In fact, he doesn't even have to carry
a pen.

Everything he needs — phone, fax, pager, email, Internet browser, IM, notepad, spreadsheet, combination camera/scanner — is integrated into the sleek, slimline, flip device in the inside pocket of his suit coat. And yes, consultants in 2010, at least the top-tier players, still wear suits. But look … you don't notice even the slightest bulge in the coat pocket.

Through that slim device, John can do everything — and more than his predecessors did when sitting in their offices equipped with big desktop or laptop computers. Software as a service (SaaS) delivers every application a consultant might need — CRM, personal and group scheduling, knowledge management, database management, business intelligence and analytics, sales pipeline management, office and personal productivity suites, collaboration and groupware, a full range of telecommunications capabilities, and graphics tools. John can assemble entire proposals on that device simply by clicking prewritten blocks of text and dragging in the appropriate graphics and analytic data elements.

With another click, John can share that proposal with colleagues across the globe. They can collaboratively edit the proposal while simultaneously speaking on the phone and then fire off the finished version to the client. And he can do it while he's standing or sitting or walking or riding. He was known to generate such collaborative proposals from a prime table at his favorite 4-star restaurant in Paris — at least until the ma

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