Everyone knows dial tone. It’s a reliable, ubiquitous part of our world that signals us to go ahead and make a connection to whomever we want to reach, almost anywhere in the world.Michael Saylor has a vision of a “query tone,” which would be a similarly pervasive service for information. Query tone would make it possible to answer any question you might have, in the form you want it, quickly and reliably. A tall order, but some of Saylor’s peers in the TR100 say he’s up to it. David Blundin, for instance,

CEO of DataSage (see p. 80) says, “If you dropped Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Mike Saylor in the woods, naked and penniless, and said, ‘First one to make a fortune wins,’ I would bet on Mike Saylor.”

Query tone will take decades to implement, if it happens at all. But Saylor’s company,MicroStrategy, is already developing preliminary, limited versions of such a service. The company has 750 corporate clients, from a variety of different vertical industries.MicroStrategy offers them an approximation

of query tone in the form of decision-support analysis via DSS

Web, a Web-based product. Last year, Saylor introduced Strategy.com, billed as the world’s first personal intelligence

network; it allows you to subscribe to the information you want

(news, weather, stock updates, and such) and specify the conditions that will trigger updates, which arrive via e-mail, fax,

phone or pager. Query tone is a contender to become part of the information infrastructure. Any questions?