E-commerce is about doing business online-using the power of digital information to understand, tailor, and deliver what each customer and partner needs, when they need it.

E-commerce is no passing fad. Many companies already engage in e-commerce: corporate purchasing; secure distribution of information; direct marketing, selling, and customer service; banking and billing, marketplace trading. Pioneering entrepreneurs have mixed Internet technologies with imagination and invented new business models and service offerings that did not exist in the pre-Internet economy.

Conducting commerce via the Internet opens new markets, new opportunities for large and small companies worldwide. According to Nua, an Internet-strategy firm, the worldwide population of Internet users will expand from 171 million in 1999 to 500 million by 2003. The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that by 2003 the Internet will account for 7 percent of the gross domestic product of just the United States. Savvy enterprises that Web-enable their businesses and dot-coms are positioning themselves to take advantage of the potential-not only of larger markets but also of creatively expanded business uses of the Internet.