Most growth in e-business isn’t in the retail, e-commerce sector.... No, most of the business being conducted over the Web is proprietary, often taking place between one business and another. Using extranets, companies are allowing their business customers to serve themselves, letting them place, track and pay for orders——all from the comfort of their PC-based browsers.

No less significant is the rising use of the Internet and other networking methods to facilitate intra-company communications.

Most businesses already rely on the Internet or other networks in some fashion or another to communicate internally, usually through E-mail. But with the advent of workgroup applications such as ProjectWise, that limited-use—and nearly Stone Age, in Internet years—approach to the Internet is forever changing.