Internet commerce will increase in value from 61 billion euros in 2000 to over 1.5 trillion euros in 2005, according to new IDC forecasts. According to IDC, B2B ecommerce will be driven by numerous factors.
Companies wish to optimize the flow of information within the supply chain.
The Internet is an excellent platform for this as the infrastructure is there today. However, B2B has to overcome some barriers along the way including security concerns and, in certain industries, a lack of understanding of what the Internet can do. Although the volume of goods sold via edistribution is growing, growth will slow over the next few years as buyers and sellers turn to other types of B2B ecommerce models. The growth of eprocurement is almost as impressive, but eprocurement is mostly interesting for larger companies that will dominate this segment. From the perspective of novelty business models, emarketplaces will be the most interesting to watch.