riding the Internet wave right from the start.

The firm's research reports and surveys are constantly being quoted in the media as the authoritative source for information about the technology.

And the firm has been smart. By making their reports available via e-mail, the firm ensures the Forrester name becomes connected with the Internet -- all this at a time when a lot of people are looking for strategic answers.

Forrester predicts on-line sales will reach $1.3 trillion a year in hard goods in the US alone. It was also amazing to discover just how much the Internet is being used for business-to-business electronic commerce.

The supplier-to-supplier market is the action. The examples given in the reports reveal a side of the Internet that ordinary surfers rarely see.

In the US, a seven-state buying co-operative called "EMall'' and the California Statewide Procurement Network link approved suppliers in a collective $10 billion buyer market.

Manheim Online (manheim.com) connects car dealers with car makers to sell vehicles coming off lease. The National Transportation Exchange (nte.net) links trucking fleets with unused back-haul space to shippers. Boat builders, dealers, and yacht brokers buy and sell at wholesale prices on marex.com, a marine exchange.

In Anatomy of New Market Models, researcher Varda Lief writes the e-commerce revolution is going to make business as a whole more efficient when companies take advantage of the technology to drive out structural inefficiencies between supplier, retailer and the customer.

Current efforts translate existing operations to the Web or through extranets in a effort to lower the cost of business through marketing information, customer service and order processing.

However new models of doing business are emerging, which Ms Lief classifies into aggregators, auctions, and exchanges. Aggregators are those businesses that attempt to create "a searchable one-stop shopping mall with predefined prices for buyers'', thus helping buyers and sellers find each other faster.

Auction companies provide a mechanism for liquidating surplus at the best prices, pitting buyers against each other. The Internet broadens the auction to a wider range of sellers, buyers and products in multiple, real-time without the search and travel costs of a "physical-world''auction.

Affiliated Remarketing Web (remarketing.com) , FastParts (fastparts.com) , Inventory Locator Service (go-ils.com), and Onsale are examples of such auction companies.

Exchanges, like on-line stock exchanges, provide a trading venue for predefined players, like the physical world, but at a fraction of the cost.

"They reduce dispersion, facilitate liquidation, or create industrywide spot pricing. While these models operate as niche entities today, by 2003 e-marketplaces will evolve to offer all three mechanisms,'' she writes.

Check out Altra Energy Technologies at altranet.com, Automated Credit Exchange at ace-mkt.com, Digital Market at digitalmarket.com, FastParts at fastparts.com, MetalSite at metalsite.com, and RateXchange at ratexchange.com for other examples of how e-commerce entrepreneurs are using the Web.

In Internet Services Hypergrowth Forrester researcher James Freeze looks at the corollary of e-business the expanding market for Internet access and hosting services. Forrester predicts this will be a US $57 billion market in 2003 in which access and hosting revenues will grow 72 percent a year.

The growth will be driven by demand for high quality and ubiquitously available Internet services. Businesses as well as home users will be demanding broadband access driving entertainment, financial services and broadcasting providers to build more content to make commerce more compelling.

Businesses will increasingly look to outsource their Web provision services and will also look for other areas to improve traditional and expensive business processes Mr. Freeze wrote. IBM, for example, anticipates the company will save $100 million this year in employee training costs by using distance learning via the Internet.

And corporate users will increasingly shift their spending toward lower-cost, Internet-based services rather than using traditional telecom alternatives.

"Today, a company can't conduct its daily operations without a telephone'', Mr. Freeze said. "In much the same way the Internet will become a necessity for doing business. Having grown from virtually nothing to $2.8 billion in just three years, the Internet services market will continue to post stellar growth rates. The US business Internet services market -- nearly $58 billion in 2003 -- will rival business long-distance phone spending in size.'' The rise of the new economy will ultimately lead to a need for governments to intervene in avoiding a regulatory quagmire.

"On one side are state and local governments (interested in protecting tax revenues) and brick-and-mortar establishments (concerned about Internet retailers having a price advantage),'' Forrester states.

"On the other, the federal government and Net-centric companies are concerned about inhibiting Internet growth and US leadership. The result will be regulation that attempts to address the concerns of both , but satisfies neither.'' In Bermuda all those factors come into place. The paragraph is an indication of what Bermuda faces in forging Internet legislation. For state and local governments insert "overseas Governments''. For brick-and-mortar establishments insert "local businesses''.

Tech Tattle is about issues in technology. Contact Ahmed at 295-5881 ext. 248, or 238-3854, or techtattle ygazette.newsmedia.bm.