E-commerce: From buzzword to bust
 
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Is the dust from the e-commerce stampede clearing? Last week, I attended IDC's annual Directions conference in Boston and was shocked at what I didn't hear.
The word "e-commerce" was absent from the predictions and the presentations. What was once so common a term it's now in the dictionary, was banished from the halls of the convention center.
There was no chart showing the skyrocketing boom towards e-commerce nirvana and there were no die-hard fanatics swearing up and down that e-commerce will be the only thing to lead us out of the bleak days of this past year.
Instead, the focus was partially on enterprise application integration and partially on mobile and wireless access. You would think with those two topics, the word "e-commerce" would be flying like a basketball during March Madness. But, alas, no. The key word was the enterprise and the direction was to figure out ways for enterprise users to access corporate data without reinventing the wheel.
In other words, the darling of 2002 is not e-commerce. Instead, Web services, which one could argue is going to be the new core of e-commerce and e-business, was at the fore. Web services will let you take all your old data and keep it usable. Web services will let you save time on developing new applications because you'll able to search for whatever you need across the Web using Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI). Web services will make all your enterprise woes disappear because it will connect everything seamlessly - it will even take that hard-to-reach data and make it easily accessible to your wireless remote users.
Everyone gasp with me.
So where does that leave last year's diva, e-commerce? An innocent bystander to the new tornado that is Web services.
What do you think? Will Web services solve all the world's ills? Does e-commerce have a place in the Web services-centric world? Let me know at sgittlen @nww.com.
RELATED LINKS
Network World, 03/11/02
Web services quandary
Network World, 02/18/02
Speeding down the voice track
Network World, 03/25/02
Sandra Gittlen is events editor for Network World's Seminars and Events Group. Previously, she was managing editor of Network World Fusion and senior reporter covering Internet research and standards for Network World magazine. She can be reached at sgittlen@nww.com.
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