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Perspective
By Paul M. Horn
Sooner is not always better. Given that IBM's first electronic calculator was announced in 1946, the company could conceivably have launched an "e-business" ad campaign a half century ago. Personally, I think it's a good thing we waited.
Why? Because the Internet has given that little "e" an entirely new meaning, taking the concept of "e-business" far beyond a simple advertising slogan. In many ways, it sums up the extraordinary breadth of products and services that IBM is uniquely able to offer. In fact, almost everything the company has done up to now has prepared it to be the e-business solutions provider.
Consider what e-business entails. At its core
is network computing, enabling companies to effortlessly connect to suppliers, employees and customers around the globe. IBM itself is a thriving e-business, surpassing $3 billion in Internet sales in 1998.
Research, together with our colleagues throughout IBM, is generating much of the
technology that makes e-business possible. At the same time, we are striving to answer the questions that inevitably arise during profound shifts in the way individuals and companies interact.
What happens, for instance, when negotiations are carried out over the Internet? How does one insure confidentiality or evaluate the trustworthiness of unknown parties? How do virtual auctions differ from live ones? What are the risks and what are the best strategies? Or, what are the implications of engaging electronic agents to act on one's behalf? These are just a few of the issues being explored in our laboratories.
For Research, with its mission of contributing value to the corporation across all of its product lines, e-business is more than an ongoing challenge, it is a focusing goal. Much of our current work is aimed at furthering e-business, either by enhancing the necessary infrastructure or helping to create specific solutions. For example, we are using the markup language XML to lower the cost of exchanging business documents over the Internet. We are also modeling the economics of utilities in a deregulated world. Pervasive computing, which will continue to simplify Internet access for information and transactions, is yet another key, emerging area to which we are contributing.
Add to these projects our efforts in security, supply-chain management, mobile computing, scalable Web servers, storage, database technology and data mining, and it quickly becomes apparent that much of what we do bears directly on the world of e-business. Moreover, that work, by making Web searches more accurate, simplifying the exchange of information and enhancing our ability to communicate, benefits every aspect of computing. I think one can say that now is the right time -- e-business has come of age.
Paul M. Horn
senior vice president and director,
Research
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