Start Online Simply, Grow Fast, Says Ibm
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday April 14, 1998
FEW will be surprised when IBM's vice-president of Internet technology, John Patrick, stands up at the seventh World Wide Web Conference (WWW7), which opens today in Brisbane, and tells attendees not to delay "e-business" plans.
Patrick, co-founder of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), says "e-business [IBM's term for e-commerce] is now, it is real, and its pace is rapidly accelerating".
When he has finished at WWW7 he will follow the well-trodden path to Canberra, where he will inform 150 Australian chief executive officers about "Enabling Australia" via e-commerce. Senator Richard Alston, Minister for the Information Economy, will also speak at the event.
For both forums, Patrick says he has three messages:
IBM's e-business strategy is about business first, then technology. "e-business is about business transformation and that requires a solution orientation like IBM's."
Start simple, grow fast. "Wherever customers are on the adoption curve, they should move swiftly to gain an advantage over their competition."
Third, build on what you have. "One of the truly inspiring things about e-business is that it can leverage, for entirely new uses, the IT infrastructure a company already has."
While IBM Australia has been banging the e-business drum most loudly in the past couple of months, Patrick insists it was one of the first to recognise that the real value of the Internet was in business-to-business transactions, not business-to-consumer.
"More than two years ago, while the rest of the industry was fighting a war over browsers, IBM was delivering world-class solutions that unlocked the business value of the Internet."
IBM doesn't quote its own success, as Dell and Cisco do, in terms of millions of dollars in annual online sales, he says, because it is still committed to an indirect sales model.
However, he says the Web is increasingly the means for Business Partners to buy hardware and software from IBM.
Individual customers in some countries now can go to www.ibm.com to configure their own NetFinity server, and have the order fulfilled by a local IBM Business Partner. (Not yet available in Australia, but due soon.)
Patrick also cites some of the most successful early adopters of e-commerce as IBM Internet customers, including Charles Schwab, Chrysler Corporation, Fuji Bank and Japan Airlines.
Unlike some competitors, he says, IBM "has made a commitment not to compete with our customers, but to enable them to become e-businesses." So IBM will not become an online finance company, an insurance company or an online travel company.
Patrick says this is also the main reason that IBM discontinued the World Avenue online shopping mall. "We found ourselves getting between our customers and their customers."
He says IBM has the hardware, software, services, education and consulting services to deliver an end-to-end e-business solution to customers, but "some of our customers have proven relationships with other vendors, so IBM also works with thousands of business partners and resellers to deliver e-business solutions."
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald
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