"Today, almost everyone is talking about the Internet as the ultimate medium of business. And so now we find ourselves in 1999 taking an equally unconventional position: Today it's clear to us that the greatest value being created by this networking technology is not in these new "dot-com" Internet companies that a lot of people seem to believe are going to redefine the world of retail, of Wall Street, of the media industry, and gobble up everyone's business. These are interesting companies, and maybe one or two of them will be profitable someday. But I think of them as fireflies before the storm all stirred up, throwing off sparks. But the storm that's arriving -- the real disturbance in the force -- is when the thousands and thousands of institutions that exist today seize the power of this global computing and communications infrastructure and use it to transform themselves. That's the real revolution. ...Right now, there's a lot of focus on e-commerce -- on Net-based buying and selling. But we think that equally important, if not more important, are the staggering investments our customers are starting to make in what we call "e-business." E-business includes e-commerce, of course. But it's about a broader set of transactions and important applications that will go to the Net in supply chain, in customer care, in e-service; and internally in applications from product development to logistics to employee training to knowledge management inside enterprises. In fact, our view is that the Web enabling of these core business process will deliver returns on investments that will equal or exceed the returns on investments coming from e-commerce."