But that is not always easy. Nor, despite promises of compatibility from the information technology industry, can different systems always be linked to each other. Now it seems convergence may finally have arrived. Notes of sanity in the gold rush From the board rooms of multinational corporations to the smoking rooms of small businesses, everyone is talking about e-commerce. Two factors are firing up this new gold rush.
Fear is one.
Greed is the other. The IT industry often acts as if it represents a mature sector of the economy. But the commercial exploitation of computers began only in the 1950s and mass market computing did not get going until the 1980s. Until the early 1990s, IT experts were still seen as a race apart and their budget was viewed with suspicion. Computing has grown out of nowhere to dominate the business environment.