Morning Report
Thu Dec 11
It's All About "e"--
=20 Fall Internet World Spells E-Business
By Steve Harmon
Senior Investment Analyst
Internet.com
"Where Wall Street Meets The Web"
From Cisco to Micrsoft, Hewlett Packard to IBM, Firefly to ICON, the
theme of this year's flagship Internet industry trade show, Fall
Internet World, is commerce. But this is not your father's buying and=20
selling.
After doing the legwork, walking the booths, talking with various firms
both upstart and established, the theme emerging from the frontier may
surprise. It's business-to-business, nuts and bolts products and
services that save time, money and create new revenue opportunities via
the Internet.
Oldline firms such as Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL - news) could be in a better
position than conventional thinking of Wall Street plays the networking
software firm.
How? Few will realize that its next generation networking product has
more ease of use than NT and costs less to deploy. It also enables
corporate-wide push and application deployment with a few mouse clicks.
For example, if the IS department head wants to install Netscape
Navigator in a certain department, say marketing, all he/she must do is
set up the dialog box to make it happen. A few mouse clicks and it's
done. The selected people have the software client.
If someone accidentally deletes crucial files for the application then
the user can click a button and Novell's product will re-install the
necessary links.
The biggest strength of Novell is its network directory system (NDS),
something that rivals envy. With NDS all of the above and more come into
the control of the IS department to manage bandwidth, content and
services in a very scalable way.
IBM's $200 million advertising campaign for e-business goes beyond just
ads. Consider Big Blue employs more Java programmers than Java inventor
Sun. Consider Lotus Domino and Notes, the groupware applications. IBM is
not asleep at the wheel. It missed the PC boom in many ways but the much
larger Web boom could be IBM's return to glory.
Privately-held ICON touts itself as "Internet Solutions Provider,"
taking the ISP acronym a step further than "service." Don't want to have
in-house Internet personnel, ICON manages the end-to-end solution.
Clients include Bloomberg, Hearst, American Express, Merrill Lynch, and
several dozen more.
Firefly showed off its expanded product offerings that let you build
what we call "intuitive" or "smart" communities as well as personalized
content and commerce for end users. Keep an eye on Firefly.
Both Cisco and Microsoft's head honchos announced in recent weeks the
potential for e-commerce runs in the hundreds of billions of dollars
range in a few years, and the companies presenting here in New York
proves that.
Not surprisingly, router king Cisco focuses on providing the hardware
solutions to make commerce a reality while Microsoft expands its server
lineup to a variety of flavors from publsihing to commerce. We think
catalog servers could also be big.
The Direct Marketing Association revealed results of a study at the
trade show that say Internet direct marketing will generate $2 billion
revenue this year and zoom to $31 billion by 2002. Given our ear to the
industry, though, we think this could be conservative.
And today a dozen firms showcase their business plans and strategies to
leading investors including Kleiner Perkins Will Hearst and Hummer
Winblad's Ann Winblad in the Internet Startup Live! Venture Showcase.
The results of that showcase and a summary of who shined and pined
coming next week. More hot companies from the tradeshow floor tomorrow.
E-everything. It's coming because it's already here. |
