Fairly Good InfoWorld Article About Business-To-Business...
ICE: Business-to-business will drive
Internet commerce, Papows says
By Nancy Weil
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 12:24 PM PT, Mar 24, 1998
BOSTON -- Internet commerce is not really about what is being done at World Wide Web
sites such as Amazon.com, the bookseller that seems always to be mentioned as a shining
example of how to do it right, said Lotus CEO and President Jeff Papows on Tuesday here
at the Internet Commerce Expo (ICE).
The real appeal of I-commerce is going to be business-to-business communications and
transactions, Papows said, and the Boston Market restaurant chain is a better example of the
future of I-commerce than is Amazon.com.
Although the restaurant does allow consumers to order food for pickup or delivery online, it
also uses the Internet to connect franchises to the corporate office to order supplies and
provide ongoing business reports.
"It's not about someone sitting in their living room deciding which side order to have with their
chicken, typically," Papows said. "Maybe some of you are that over the edge, but not
usually."
While online retail commerce will reach $7 billion in revenues in the next two years according
to International Data Corp., business-to-business I-commerce will reach $150 billion,
Papows said. Although data can always be quibbled with, those figures are realistic, he said,
given the social and behavioral aspects of shopping -- consumers like to go to stores and
touch the goods and interact with salespeople.
Companies that want to grab a piece of the I-commerce market and help businesses use the
Internet will provide software and hardware that help integrate the back end of the network
with the Web, Papows said. However, user companies need to be careful not to "get too
many moving parts" into their IS infrastructure or they could be difficult to control, he warned.
I-commerce hardware and software must be linked from the back office to the Web and
managed as a single continuum, not separate pieces, Papows said.
The emergence of the Web, followed now by the burgeoning I-commerce market, has
happened so quickly and will continue at such a fast pace that it will be easy to be left behind,
said Papows, who described some trends in I-commerce as well as Internet myths.
Netscape is a prime example of what happens when a company is passed by others moving
more quickly, Papows said.
Eighteen months ago, no one would have predicted that Netscape would be debating in the
trade press whether or not its Internet browser share is 55 percent or 59 percent, Papows
said. Microsoft and its Internet Explorer (IE) have pushed aside Netscape.
Not even two years ago, IE was "unheard of, absolutely unheard of," Papows said. "IE was
something you yelled when you fell out of a window."
Sticking with an ongoing prediction he has made, Papows said that the Java programming
language will continue to be hot and play a pivotal role in Web development, regardless of
ongoing controversies fueled by Microsoft's legal battle with Java owner and developer Sun
Microsystems.
In the end, succeeding at I-commerce and the Web come down to providing information to a
vast number of people, Papows said.
Jeff Newman of Newman Enterprises. in Holliston, Mass., was intrigued by what Papows
had to say. As head of a small health and nutrition marketing company, he has been frustrated
trying to develop a Web presence.
"I know from personal experience you need access to the information. I know being alone
out there, it's not easy to access the information to build your own business [on the Web],"
Newman said. "I'm more of a user and it intrigues me that the world is at my fingertips as a
small-business owner."
Papows also hinted at a new technology that would be integrated into Domino/Notes release
5.0 when that ships later this year. Code-named Prarie Dog, the technology provides users
with a real-time view of what is going on in the workflow process on a busy network, such as
a call center.
Users can see how many calls are queued up, who is handling which call, and how many calls
are on hold, in addition to viewing additional real-time information that could be essential to
users working in the fast-paced call center environment. Also, the technology would provide
an instant-messaging feature that could be used among the users for quick, ad hoc
collaboration on immediate problems.
Notes and Domino have been a flat file database collaboration platform. This new real-time
capability will become a real-time "extension" to Notes and Domino, according to Bryan
Simmons, a Lotus spokesman.
Lotus Development Corp., in Cambridge, Mass., can be reached at (617) 577-8500 or
lotus.com.
Nancy Weil is a Boston correspondent for the IDG News Service, an InfoWorld
affiliate. Kathleen Ohlson, a Boston correspondent for the News Service, contributed
to this article. Additional reporting by Jessica Davis. |
