WWW5: opening of "business on the Web"

"business of the Web" was announced as a forum for SMEs (Small Medium and Enterprise businesses). on the third day of the conference, the sessions in the technical program and the SMEs forum were basically the same. on the last day of the conference, there were two independent sets of sessions, a technical oriented "developers day" and the business oriented continuation of the "SMEs forum".

keynote presentations:

• bernard vergnes of Microsoft presented some stunning numbers about the growth of the Internet and the business opportunities that his company envisions. he talked about ActiveX , Microsoft's new approach to link information together.
  when a person at the end of his presentation reminded him, that not everybody has a PC, bernard vergenes answered, that Microsoft's strategy also includes the MacIntosh ...
• ... which gave steve fink of Digital Equipment Corporation the perfect opportunity to mention, that digital supports not only Microsoft's Windows NT on PCs, but also UNIX workstations. the audience responded with great applause to that statement. steve fink presented similar numbers about the growth of the Internet.
• steven mcgeady of Intel basically came to the same conclusions as the two speakers before him as far as the business opportunities on the Internet is concerned.

the Internet is THE business opportunity of today:

to me, it is obvious that virtually all big companies in the computer business have recognized the huge potential the Internet represents. on the first two or three WWW conferences, people mostly complained about how difficult it is to find the information one needs and there were presentations about tools and ideas to solve that problem. these days are over. now people talk about how one can do business on the Internet and what has to be done to have fast and secure connections. the focus has changed from technical issues to business related topics.

back to WWW5 main document.