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Computerworld - Ike Nassi is something of a renaissance man in IT, having held senior technical positions at SAP AG, Cisco Systems Inc., Apple Computer Inc., Digital Equipment Corp. and several other companies. He's now the senior vice president for research at SAP Labs U.S. in Palo Alto, Calif. Nassi founded Firetide Inc. and co-founded Encore Computer Corp., and he helped start the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

He has held positions at Stanford University, MIT, Boston University and the University of California, Berkeley. Nassi played key roles in the design of the Ada programming language and the Mach operating system. He recently told Computerworld's Gary Anthes what's driving change in the software world.

What major changes in IT are on the horizon? The integration of the real world and the IT world is going to happen, and it's going to accelerate. It's going to be driven by the increase in RFID in sensor networks and the rise of embedded microprocessors. We are doing things here that couldn't have been done three to five years ago. For example, we are working with the city of Palo Alto to outfit fire trucks with a variety of wireless communications gear so we can track fire engines back to SAP's back-end systems. One thing the fire department was interested in, for example, was ... understanding why a fire truck would take what appeared to be a nonoptimal route to a fire.

What's another example of this kind of pervasive wireless network? The automobile has a tremendous number of microprocessors but has been slow to adopt networking. We are exploring back-end Web services [for] network-enabled cars. For example, my car told me I needed an oil change. But in the mail, I got a notice saying my car needed a software change. If the whole thing were network-enabled, I could have gotten an e-mail saying, "Your car needs to be serviced. Make an appointment by clicking here, and when you come in, we'll upgrade the software in your car." [There is] a potentially very large number of back-end services that can be delivered to the car or driver.

What's an example of a future corporate application of RFID and wireless networks? We are also looking at RFID-enabled assembly lines. One issue is that the back-end inventory management system is often not as consistent with the actual inventory on the assembly line or the parts depot. By tracking parts usage on the assembly line, you potentially have fewer line shutdowns and more-accurate forecasting and usage information. Also, if there are component product recalls, you have highly accurate information about where the faulty products were used.