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The News -- 9/24/00
One-Third of Business Say
E-Commerce Will Transform
The
majority of companies in a KPMG International global study see the Internet
having a profound effect on the role they play in their industries - with
nearly one-third expecting to see e-business changing their core
businesses, according to the professional services organization. Full
Story
Microsoft Enhances
bCentral
Microsoft
today introduced "Business
Web Services," a collection of hosted Web tools, email, e-commerce
and marketing applications that will be available on the software giant's
bCentral small-business service. The service, which will be available later
this year, will cost businesses $24.95 per month.
One London
resident, James Stevens, wants to wirelessly network all of London by using relatively
cheap, off-the-shelf parts. With the help of dozens of volunteers,
Stevens is hoping to create a city-wide wireless network, built and
maintained by the users themselves. Unlike the commercial wireless
networks, Stevens' Consume
the Net network will offer free access to anyone with a computer and a
US$100 wireless networking card.
Wireless
Internet access provider Metricom today launched a broad offensive to boost
adoption of its service for mobile PC customers. Metricom has debuted its
speedier service in six new cities: Baltimore, Dallas, Houston,
Philadelphia, Phoenix and New York. The slower original version was
available only in San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., with service
recently launched in Atlanta and San Diego as well. All cities now receive
the faster service. The newer service, also called Ricochet, delivers
Internet content to PC customers at 128 kbps, comparable to an ISDN
connection and several times faster than dial-up modems or the original
Ricochet offering, which is only capable of 28.8-kbps downloads.
" Consumers don't think they want the wireless Web yet, but
they will." So said Forrester analyst Patrick Callinan, explaining
his firm's recent conclusion that there is "latent demand" for
Internet-enabled mobile phones in the United States. The study that
uncovered the latent demand also pointed out that respondents from 34
percent of households surveyed said it was unlikely they would buy any
cellular devices, and two-thirds of North American consumers said they were
reluctant to make purchases using Internet cell phones.
Shakeout Looming in B2B
Communities?
This is a
good round-up article from ClickZ about the opportunities and threats
facing B2B communities and exchanges. It's packed with stats and references
as well as questions you should ask about participating in an online
exchange or community.
"B2B communities are
places where businesses sometimes engage in e-commerce, but that's not
their primary goal. Exchanges or online marketplaces, on the other hand,
are established specifically to conduct e-commerce. They bring together
buyers and sellers, offering procurement services that feature consolidated
purchasing from numerous partner vendors, e-malls, or
bidding/auction-oriented sites. Is a shakeout looming for these types of
web properties?" Full Article
1 Million Businesses on
DSL in 3 Years? Sounds light to me
This
prediction seems way too conservative to me. According to eMarketer,
"More than 1 million U.S. businesses will turn to xDSL technologies
for broadband internet access within the next 3 years, according to
eMarketer's eCommerce: B2B Report. During the same period, the number of
businesses accessing the internet will rise from 4.5 million by year-end
2000 to over 6.7 million by 2003.
"Currently, less than
10% of business users connect to the internet using xDSL, but by 2003,
eMarketer expects that business xDSL subscribers will rise to more than 16%
of the business access market. A study by the Strategis Group found that
57% of U.S. firms access the internet via dial-up connections at speeds of
only 56 kilobits per second. The vast majority of these companies are small
businesses, with less than 100 employees.
"As e-commerce
activity increases, many small businesses will be upgrading to faster
access speeds in order to accommodate the greater demand for
bandwidth," says eMarketer's Senior Business Analyst, Steve Butler.
"Research has found that the use of application service providers
(ASP's) will be a significant driver of broadband adoption as well."
"xDSL will be the
preferred access technology chosen by small businesses due to its low cost
compared to fiber. Furthermore, xDSL technologies offer better security
than cable," added Butler.
"For more on the
report, click here."
Preparing for the B2B
Battle
Gulf War
veteran and FreeMarkets founder/CEO Glen T. Meakem is trying to stave off
competitor VerticalNet and survive in the perilous online marketplace
sector. Business Week
Wireless Web wave breaks
over the IPO market
Wireless is
hot for VCs too. This article focuses on the wireless providers for devices
such as palm and Blackberry. Red Herring
The Great Thing About
Standards: There are so many of them!
There's a
new XML format in town: RSS 1.0.
Co-founder and Chief Architect David Galbraith of Moreover.com is co-author of RSS 1.0,
which has become the de facto standard for web-based syndication. This new
version of RSS promises to make simple web syndication rival existing
heavyweight standards. Through the use of modules, it will allow different
parties to extend the core spec. to produce components describing data
specific to a particular use or industry. It is a significant step towards
inventor of the web Tim Berners Lee's vision for the 'semantic web': one
vast database of information. Check it out at Moreover
Business guru Tom Peters
sees major e-commerce shakeout
OK, I think
Tom Peters is great. But after seeing him speak at a Delphi conference in
May, I don't think he knows a thing about B2B e-commerce. Here he holds
forth about that topic and says over 85 percent of e-commerce-based
companies will bite the big one. He may be right about that, and I sure
like this quote: "E-commerce is not a technology play, it's a
relationship, partnering, communication, and organizational play, made
possible by technology." More
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