2000 IBM chief Lou Gerstner last year was among the first to emphasize that e-business would become serious business once the napping captains of industry woke up to the Internet's potential. It's one thing for a bunch of VC-soaked startups to make dotcom plays in retail, financial services and other industries. But watch out when the likes of Wal-Mart and Merrill Lynch get going.
Most industry giants are now well on their way.
After a timid start, Wal-Mart relaunched its consumer Web site in January and is overhauling its electronic links with hundreds of suppliers. GE Plastics, for instance, last week said it's on track to conduct half of its North American sales over the Internet by the end of this year. Just when you're relieved that one part's fixed or another extension is added, a new, more colossal challenge or opportunity is exposed. Re-enter the dotcoms. As associate editor L. Scott Tillett reports in his page 1 story, some big name grocers are capitalizing on those weaknesses and strengths, snapping up depressed dotcoms to, in part, get a Web infrastructure on the cheap.