We have now the technological means to turn data- and information resources into hard cash. This is not a new discovery, but the focus have now turned towards information. Many smart entrepreneurs have discovered that ownership of information can be a goldmine, especially if you can combine the information with the right business case to exploit it. Data and information in "raw" form might generate a minor value, an example can be Terabytes of geological data, but when it is refined into products and services, it can literally be turn into gold.
One misconception is that information can't be used for other purposes than for what it was generated for. What we see with Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) is the separation of services and resources, where many services can be connected to many resources.
But, turning information into hard cash, means that you must have absolute control over the content of the information. That isn't generally the case today. Entrepreneurs tend to collect finished "information products", like documents, pictures, maps, music, films and files, and they sell them in the same form.
The gigantic leap will come when information providers can provide access to sources of information that can be used for many different types of applications. Instead of selling radar-systems to military customers, it could be smart for the contractor to own the array of radar-systems themselves, and then sell the data to military customers, a subset to civil air control, to hunters, to private pilots, to fishermen, to emergency services, to contractors, to weather services, to transport companies, and many many more. I would guess that this would prove to be very profitable for the contractors and for the customers.
Investors have now started a serious hunt for exploitable information resources. One example is the value of customer-databases. If you have an updated and quality assured customer register then that can be very valuable. Just referr to the Skype deal, $4,1 billions (witch equates to a potential exploitable value of $74.54 (from $1.09) per customer, and they had 55 million customers).
There are many "Source Providers" on the Web, trying to sell access to their vast libraries of images, music, film, books, newspapers and much more. I am using Urge as my source provider for music. I like the simpleness and the reliable access. But I am also a user of Pandora Internet Radio, http://www.pandora.com/, that provides me with free of charge music with an interesting touch.
