VARs Face E-Commerce Challenges

In a keynote presentation at the E-business Expo here, Sean Maloney, an Intel Corp. senior vice president, said among the other challenges are increasing system performance to handle a more intense E-commerce load and simplifying the consumer experience.

Building and deploying an E-commerce site, whether it is a business-to-business infrastructure or a consumer E-commerce site, will not be easy, said Maloney.

Setting up a business-to-business site, for example, means developing a robust system that can handle vigorous traffic and provide fool-proof security, said Maloney. At the same time, he said, VARs must make sure clients using the site can get information and place orders quickly, regardless of their internal computer foundation.

"In business-to-business, the supplier owns all the problems," he said.

When Intel launched its business-to-business services in January 1998, site developers studied client LAN infrastructures, ISP capabilities and the average number of components on an Internet page to make sure the site would service all of its accounts efficiently. Today, Intel generates about $1 billion per month through Internet business-to-business services, Maloney said.

As business-to-business transactions mature, Maloney foresees intelligent agents and integrated applications automatically updating the information a customer needs to do day-to-day business.

For example, Maloney said component ordering could be completely automated for manufacturers. Business-to-business links for a number of suppliers would keep a steady stream of pricing and availability coming in, which would automatically update in a spreadsheet. When a customer orders a part, another spreadsheet, this time of the supplier side, would reflect reduced inventory and up revenues for the month.

On the consumer side, E-business will need to be expanded to provide a similar set of services but in a more simplified fashion.

"The challenge for E-business for the consumer client is that the experience has to be very simple, easy to use, and it has to be compelling enough to get the user to stay on the Web," Maloney said.

Over the next few years, Maloney said, more information and transactions will be completed over the Internet using voice recognition. Additionally, he said more products will be presented in 3-D with live sound and other descriptions.

If that sounds far-fetched given the computing power of mainstream users and today's 56-Kbps world, Maloney pointed out that improvements in the Internet will increase rapidly. "We will put another 10X increase in performance [in PCs] over the next three years," and bandwidth will increase as well, he said.

Both business-to-business and consumer E-commerce site builders need to consider load carefully when implementing sites, Maloney said.

His advice: Remember that the Internet is event driven in nature, and spikes will not be limited to predictable peak-user hours. Any special event or promotion could significantly increase hits, and along with that added multimedia elements or security, could drag down the system.

Maloney said companies should look to new, faster processors and next-generation I/O architectures to help ease the burden. He used the opportunity to promote Intel's forthcoming IA64 next-generation processor, which he said will ship in four-way to 512-way machines by middle to late next year.

Maloney said the new competitive ground for U.S. businesses in the next decade will be in cyberspace. "It is clear that all businesses will become E-businesses over the next three to five years," he said.