March - 2000 - issue > Openfile

Who Thought Life Would Get Simpler?
The Web just keeps getting more complicated and business models more specialized as dot.coms attempt to make our life and business simpler. Web ideologies get demolished as fast as they get created. It’s as if the Web has a soul of its own that laughs at everyone that makes a prediction about its future. To grasp the nature of this soul, in this issue we take measure of the growing business-to-business e-commerce sector. As much as everyone assumed that the Web would eliminate intermediaries — and that businesses will become super efficient — the result is to the contrary. For all sectors of the economy, ranging from B2C to B2B, the Internet is spawning a new set of specialized intermediaries that are fast building relationships across their sectors to gain market awareness that they hope would result in market share in the future.

These constant developments are causing vendor, customer and strategic-partner relationships to turn increasingly hazy. With the Web being so spontaneous and dynamic, without the knowledge of the customers, a transaction tends to involve several parties, and this is only expected to increase. Traditional businesses beware — the Internet and the spawning B2B e-commerce paradigm is going to affect every business in the course of the next few years, just as it is affecting nearly every aspect of our personal and professional life today.

Just as the Internet is redefining the way businesses operate, the way Internet businesses operate is constantly changing, too. This phenomenon, in itself, is a paradigm shift for the high-tech industry, and is affecting management styles, strategies and the way deals are done. Today, these new skills are more sought after in entrepreneurs, CEOs and other senior executives, ahead of management degrees or experience. The new emerging Internet economy is bringing about changes in ways beyond business models and efficiencies — it is creating personal and management efficiencies as well.

The unwarranted arrest and harassment of Indian software professionals working at an Air Force base in San Antonio, TX, has deeply disturbed the Indian high-tech community in the US. We have complete coverage in our article “The Day Tech Workers Were Outraged,” on page 44. Given the sharp increase in demand for high-tech talent and an apparent shortage of workers, the rules and procedures that govern the H-1B process seem archaic, and cry for change. We received a steady stream of e-mail from employers, employees and attorneys that point at inefficiencies and loopholes in the letter of the law, leading to anxiety and paranoia for all involved in the process. This issue needs to be examined closely and a simple and fair procedure put in place for the tech sector to build on its recent growth.

Yogesh Sharma, Editor