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Sometimes revolutions happen so steadily that, even though they are deep and fundamental, those caught up in them fail to fully pick up on what is happening.

In preparing this report, the Information Age editors have felt that something like this has been happening on their watch. Over the past five years, our writers have reported on the huge investments in corporate and public bandwidth, on the emergence of a host of new wireless technologies, on the convergence of packetised voice and data networks, on the invention and power of wide area web services. Sometimes, they have analysed this with great prescience.

Yet it is only in putting together this report, and in reviewing so many simultaneous advances, that we have fully understood the 'wow' factor that these developments deservedly provoke.

This report is full of examples of big and small corporations and telecoms companies whose businesses are being fundamentally transformed, or are about to be transformed, by the advent of high-bandwidth, always-on, converged and agile networks. In most cases, they are going through this process in a down-to-earth manner, free from the hype that characterised the years when many of these technologies were first introduced.

But that does not make it any less revolutionary. The corporate networks of 2010 will be as far from those of 2000 as the computers of 2005 are from those of 1995. But, as always, only those who make the right decisions, and who manage the transformation with care, will reap the full benefits.