The Internet is an integration of multimedia sources the merger of words, graphics and application tools providing a forum that is a television, newspaper, computer, shopping precinct, workplace, school, and so on. It is a composition, a matrix of connected computers around the world advancing global communication opportunities and immediacy of information flow. Previously mute computers can now talk to each other.

Web-enabled personal computers (PCs) will transform information technology into a primary medium for human communication as hundreds of millions of PCs are or will become connected. The Internet provides a company with the facility, regardless of its own scale, to advertise, display and demonstrate its products. It also gives customers multiple choices about their purchase decisions, and provides ready information about competitors, new products and technologies.

For the business community this is a medium that is making available product offerings to a wordwide market at any time of the day, 365 days a year. Not only do the business processes become accelerated as customers' perceptions about availability become a real-time delivery expectation as a spoken need, but the total value package will also have to make provision for customer interactivity with the supply chain, providing access to information about stock availability, pricing, progress tracking and delivery date confirmation at the time of order, which will need to be competitive wherever in the world the order is received.

The global enterprise used to be the domain of a few companies whose scale could give them production, procurement and...