ELECTRONIC COMMERCE: THE MANTRA OF Y2K+

We are presently witnessing mergers and takeovers of unprecedented speed and extent between companies once thought to have national identities, or at least clearly identifiable lines of products or services. On the day this paragraph was written, the British Vodaphone Air Touch announced an Internet alliance with the French conglomerate Vivendi. The deal was conditional on Vodaphone's hostile takeover of Germany's Mannesmann and, in the end, did establish a branded multi-access portal in Europe. About a week later, the takeover of Mannesmann was official – the biggest ever, and friendly. MCI's attempted takeover of Sprint is another example of a strategically advantageous combination of different information technologies. January 2000 saw CNN, NTV, and the Deutsche Handelsblatt (a direct competitor to the Financial Times) launch a multimedia product for stock market news that is accessible via television, printed newspapers, and the World Wide Web. And so it goes. Although many differing views are held regarding the causes and consequences of these phenomena, we would probably all agree that they reflect a certain shift of emphasis from production-based economics to one grounded in the processing, marketing, and access of information. Whether the products themselves are merely “information” or systems for managing and processing vast amounts of data, information systems are seen as a crucial strategic means for organizing, improving, and maintaining more traditional production cycles.