Suppliers can better manage manufacturing schedules. Some of the Internet's promise remains to be realized. Clicking on websites can test one's patience as narrow bandwidth and slow processors make for lots of thumb twiddling while screens fill. Skeptics point to the two-thirds of American households that have no computers as evidence that online culture is not as ubiquitous as Net heads would have us believe. But if one considers how many of those households include someone who accesses the Internet from a computer at work, the picture changes.
Figures vary on how much business is occurring on-line.
It's often said nobody really has figured out how to make money on the Internet. Many business executives who agreed initially to development of a web presence now want hard numbers to justify its maintenance cost. But measuring the Internet's value based on sales may be missing the point. Evan Kaplan, CEO and president of Aventail Corp., a Seattle-based maker of Internet security software, likens costs of the Internet to those of the telephone earlier this century. The expense of buying a phone and maintaining monthly service was secondary to how businesses used the then-new technology to reach customers, suppliers and employees.