We've come to the end of a short book designed to help managers think through the implications of the Internet and the Web on the way their companies do business.

The transition that we are witnessing has generated lots of activity and dozens of different predictions. In 1999, when the stock market was awarding extraordinary value to new e-business startups, it seemed as if any Internet strategy was better than none at all. It also looked as if the market was convinced that all conventional retail companies were doomed, soon to be replaced by Web-based retailers. In a magazine article, Peter Drucker, the well-known management guru, suggested that all Fortune 500 companies would eventually be replaced by newer, more flexible e-business companies. A few large corporations launched massive transition programs to assure that they would be among the survivors.

In spite of all the articles that suggest otherwise, most of the largest corporations have made only modest inroads into the world of e-business. They developed Web sites, explored some modest online selling efforts, and studied how they might do something more elaborate. In effect, most large IT organizations looked at the kind of software required for a comprehensive, scalable Internet response that could integrate existing legacy applications and bring the company's existing resources to bear on the Internet challenge and realized that the transition was going to take time and planning.

Luckily for these companies, by mid-2000 the market had come to agree with them. The value of new e-business...