The problem with Ripple is that it is centralized. In that case a MySQL database is much faster and cheaper. Ripple builds solutions for banks and financial services but they do not connect them to the global network. It's merely a showroom for whats possible. So yes, Ripple might be the future. No, you don't need XRP to use it. You only need a contract with the Ripple foundation to either run your custom version of the network on their server or hand you over some XRP from their bag of 63 billion outstanding XRP.