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Article by Sam Martin, PE, CVS, President of OfficeOnWeb, Technologies. 2/1/2000

The twenty first century has arrived for those of us not caught up in the zero versus year one debate. Apart from a few minor bizarre dates appearing here and there and a local video store or two that insisted that everyone was 100 years late returning their movies, everyone has made it through Y2K. Indeed, the biggest problem on the Internet was everyone logging on to see if they could log on (that caused a huge bandwidth problem that slowed service for almost a month).

So what will the future bring this year? (I wouldn't even begin to try for any longer.) E-commerce will continue to grow dramatically. However, it will become quite different than it was before, no longer a haven for "computer people". It will be something that almost everyone in an industrialized country uses. Your TV, radio, stove, and even the toaster may be tied into the net before the decade comes to a close. If you hate computers, prepare to enter the gates of Hades. Your car, house and appliances are going to have computers inside and much of it will be tied to the Internet. You can survive without it, but you are unlikely to be able to escape using it.

How did I come to these prognostications? My crystal ball? Of course not, poll after poll supports these predictions, and what I see happening on the net as I work in this industry. Some examples: Internet traffic is doubling every one hundred days (BBB), over 200 million people are on line right now. More than half the US population has web access in some form right now. The proportions of people on the Internet within the US now are approaching a match of the proportions of people in the US, e.g., male to female ratio, race ratios, etc. Web site addresses are now being considered a necessary part of being in business. Phones, cars, TV's, radios, and other devices are being designed with Internet access and interaction is a standard option.

Further, even people that once hated the computer so much that they said they would never use one are now on line. Over 60 percent of the US is on line, plus over 40 percent of the Austrian population are now on line. By 2003 over one third of the European population are expected to use MOBILE phones to access the Internet (Forrester Research). Over 90% of European executives plan to launch sites that are Internet phone accessible.

The Internet is growing so fast that as much as 50% of purchasers failed in their first attempt (Anderson Consulting). Why? Local system unreliability, bandwidth failures, web site server crash, poor programming, user misunderstanding on how to proceed, programming that misleads the user into an incorrect path that did not allow the user to complete their order, and other problems. Interestingly enough, many rate the on line store as better than the typical "brick and mortar" shop. Over 80 percent of traditional "brick and mortar" shops did not deliver goods on time this Christmas. This compares to only 20 percent of the on line stores. Thus, the traditional "brick and mortar" shop was 4 times worse producing a product in a timely fashion than the store front that did not have a physical store. Not only that, projections are that web purchases will increase many-fold this year alone.

Imagine a world where you are on your way home and you tell your home to put on the coffee, let the cat out, turn up the heat, and stock up on some groceries from the local store. Some of the devices being designed right now are able to do exactly this type of activity. You tell me if they are going to become a part of the future. Me, I am old fashioned and am patiently waiting to check it all out. Yet I believe it all.

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Did you know that in 1998 more than 95% of OfficeOnWeb's new customers made a profit from their web site within their first year of operation? Sad, but it is true. This compares to less than 20% industry wide ever even breaking even. Why? Professional and directed expertise. This industry average for people leaving their current web service provider is 4% per month! That's nearly 50% over a year! Ours is less than 1% per year. That is because we endeavor to make our clients money and don't just offer a "pat solution" that we know has a low probability of ever making our client a profit. Some of the features that make up the level of success that our clients enjoy are:

 Five redundant backbone connections

 99.999% up time on UNIX servers

 Redundant OC-3 connect to all five backbones

 Full data center services

RAID 5 system with weekly backup of critical systems

 True Web Developer Services

 Large support site for clients and visitors

 Four level or higherencryption on all e-commerce solutions designed by Office On Web (this is the government standard required if Government people are to use a site)

 We NEVER host a commercial site on an access server (that is really bad, but common in dial up providers)

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