These are the days that challenge even the best Internet business plan. After all, you can hardly turn on the television or pick up a newspaper without reading about the latest failure of the Internet to make good on the promises it once made so boldly and confidently.

Tech stocks are in the dumpster. Layoffs plague Silicon Valley. Online profits are small or non-existent. Suddenly we’re rethinking the role of this new and exciting medium in our business-to-business master plans.

While a sliding or flat NASDAQ may not impact your business — or your e-business strategy — perception can shape reality. And right now the online perception is enough to make us all skittish about investing in all this uncertainty.

The myth of the dot-com era was that all business and money were moving online, and untold riches awaited all of us in the digital hills. As myths go, it was a doozy. Unfortunately, like most things too good to be true, it wasn’t.

But the same is true of all things gloom-and-doom. Things are never as bad as we may fear.

Despite the rocky economic climate, the Internet is alive and kicking and continues to play an integral part of doing business, according to Intel chief executive Craig Barrett.

“The Internet is the medium for communication, entertainment, for access to information,” Barrett said during his recent keynote speech at the Network+Interop networking industry trade show in Las Vegas. “It is growing dramatically and will continue to grow dramatically.”

Barrett, whose company builds processors for PCs, servers, handheld devices and networking equipment that speeds the Net, dismissed the notion that interest in the Internet is waning. Every two minutes, he said, there are 1,400 new auctions on eBay, $11,000 worth of products sold on Amazon.com, 1,500 new cell phones bought and 8,300 searches conducted on the Internet search engine Google.

The problem isn’t the Internet; it’s the general economic malaise, Barrett said.

“We’re in a strong recessionary period in the U.S.,” he said. “The pace of technology never slows down. The number of customer orders does. But you have to continue to invest in technology to be successful.”

Dot-coms may be dropping right and left, but consumers are still looking to the Web, according to a new government study that says online retail sales are expected to reach $65 billion in North America this year; an increase of $20 billion from 2000.

It’s not the first sign that consumers are continuing to spend online. A recent report from the Department of Commerce found that consumers increased spending online 36 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, compared with the third quarter. That report found that online sales in the fourth quarter were $8.7 billion, more than 1 percent of total retail sales.

Dollars don’t tell the whole story. Communication and information make the Web work for you and your end users. In that sense, the tech world is booming. With each passing day it becomes a much larger part of our lives, both personal and professional.

Individual websites are exploding in number. Free home pages and e-mail, given away by such companies as MSN and Yahoo!, have created a new culture. There is no business, no significant social, no cultural group that is not moving rapidly online.

“It’s going to get better,” Barrett said. “The reason is we have a digital world ahead of us. It’s not going to slow down. If you look at the number of Internet users, computers, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) sold each year, the number continues to go up.”

So pause and reflect on your online strategy if you must. Just don’t be fooled by the current gray skies; the Internet is here to stay.




POSTED ON: 6/1/2001