【正文】 al assault on the prevailing mantra of anizational theory: decentralization is good。s needed to plete a successful sale. emerce triggers a chain reaction throughout the rest of the enterprise: across pricing systems, inventory, logistics, credit, and distribution and on out to the supply chain. So now the ebusiness leaders understand that the ebusiness transformation must sweep across all of these core business processes. This is driving huge investments today in applications for supply chain management, eprocurement, customer relationship management, knowledge management. And while all of these processes are being transformed, something else is going on. They39。t have invested $1 billion building this category we call ebusiness. Now, what transactions and what relationships are important to businesses and institutions? There are many. Interactions on the front end, yes, with customers, but also with people who want to invest with you and people who want to work for you. Interactions at the back end: across the supply chain, transactions that connect an enterprise to markets and to industries. There are vital internal transactions: order processing, fulfillment, logistics, manufacturing and employee processes. And finally, all those relationships panies want to have with their products: appliances, industrial machinery, consumer electronics so the pany can provide aftersale service and also understand how these products are performing in the marketplace and then make them better. Now, five years ago we asserted that every one of these processes and relationships would be transformed by the Net. But if you think about it, we39。t subsidize those models with easy access to capital wele back to earth. So where are we? Today, ebusiness is just business real business. And real business is serious work. After the hype, after the IPO alchemists have had their 15 minutes, it39。t work that way. Too many people failed to remember that the Inter is a technology. It is a tool. Yes, a very powerful one, but it didn39。ve got to partner to get content. Why? Because people thought the Net was all about online magazines, online sports scores, digital artwork. Then the first real killer app arrived: consumer emerce. The race to sell books, groceries, airline tickets, toys, videos, pet food you name it over the Net. And then, after we all got tipsy on Inter retailing, we lurched over to the next drunken binge B2B emerce. And once again, something important, something real, got obscured by simplistic schemes: petitors ingling their supply chains or even taking the supply chains public, divorced from their basic pany. And what was the driving force behind much of this frenzy? It was the desperate, aching desire to be seen as leaders in building The New Economy. The New Economy. That39。t see new industries. They don39。t work inside the information technology industry and even some of you who do are asking: Excuse me? Was this all just fools gold? Is ebusiness and the Inter just a digitally remastered version of client/server? Another paperless office? The checkless society revisited? A collusion between the I/T industry, which wants to sell boxes, and the media which wants to sell papers? All of this was running through my mind as I prepared for this talk. And I feel I owe you, if not an explanation, at least a perspective. After all, I was one of the first to say the Net was going to take its place alongside all the other great, worldaltering technologies like electricity and manned flight. I think what39。 1 eBusiness Conference Expo Lou Gerstner, chairman and CEO of IBM, addressed the eBusiness Conference Expo in New York City Dec. 12, 2020. He spoke on trends of the next generation of ebusiness. The last time that I was on this stage was exactly four years ago today delivering the keynote at Inter World in December of 1996. And I39。t dot you were dottoast. We also saw the brief fascination with B2B marketplaces emarketplaces many of them still alive only in press releases. And just the other week, The New York Times was wondering if there really was something called the New Economy. So, lots of twists and turns, fortunes made and lost the kind of high business drama that used to play out over years and decades has been pressed into months and quarters. How exhilarating! What sport! But I suspect that many of you who don39。s a period of wild enthusiasm intoxicating optimism that the new technology is going to rewrite the laws of petition and economics, going to create whole new wealth, wipe out old industries, create new ones. Predictably that fever passes only to be replaced by significant disillusionment. People open their eyes. They don39。ve got to own content. I39。d have hits, clicks, page views and downloads. What a wonderful world! And some people really believed in it. But I think most people now realize that the business world doesn39。t have a business and economic model that could sustain these lower prices while generating returns. And when they couldn39。s what I want to talk about this morning. First, integration. IBM has believed from the very beginning that the Net was going to be about the transformation of every important transaction and relationship. Not just one not just emerce otherwise, we wouldn39。s interest. But now a lot of panies have discovered that taking orders over a Web site is only a very tiny piece of what39。re being integrated within the enterprise. 3 This is a very important, difficult and significant issue for CEOs. The fundamental anization and governance models of corporations is being challenged. Historically, in many institutions, every one of t