【正文】 d the winners the people who stick with it and do the work understand that this next phase of ebusiness is going to be all about two things: Integration and Infrastructure. And that39。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。 like wanting to inspect the product and possibly return the product. Despite the fact that a lot of Inter retailers burst upon the scene proclaiming whole new business models, in reality, their business was built on a centuriesold value proposition lower price. The trouble was they didn39。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。d measure things on the basis of eyeballs and stickiness. Instead of bona fide customers and genuine loyalty, we39。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。s where we are today with ebusiness. In its first phase you all remember well a lot of confusion about what the Net would be. Remember all the motion about content? Content is king. I39。t see new industries. They don39。s happened with those other transformational technologies. First, there39。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。s been an interesting four years, but why skip back to the primordial days of the Inter? The events of this year alone have been plenty interesting all by themselves. Of course, 2020 will be remembered for the dot shakeout and with it the overturning of the belief in the media and in the boardrooms that if you weren39。 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。m tempted to say it39。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 happened with ebusiness parallels what39。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。t see radically new business lifeforms. And they say: Bah, fet it. That passes too, and the world finally gets down to the important work of taking the technology and integrating it into the structure and fabric of society and business. And that39。ve got to own content. I39。s a very 2 interesting concept. What would constitute a New Economy? It might have new currencies. We could call them ebills or ebucks. Instead of musty old metrics like revenue and profit, we39。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 change the fundamental behavior of consumers: such as their desire for choice。t have a business and economic model that could sustain these lower prices while generating returns. And when they couldn39。s time to understand that we39。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。ve actually only seen transformation of one business process so far: businesstoconsumer merce. That39。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