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Thursday
- August 10, 2000
Race to Provide Emarketing
Services Heats Up
What began as a slow crawl to enter the emarketplace
services industry in 1999 has turned into a flat-out sprint
this year. According to IDC, service providers from all walks
of life including systems integrators, management consultants,
Internet service firms, and pure-play emarketplace services
firms are racing to the finish line to be among the first
to provide these services.
"The increased speed of
movement on the part of service firms is directly related
to the amount of opportunity within the emarketplace services
industry," said Dr. Leo Lipis, senior analyst for
IDC's eMarketplace Services research program. "The
development, deployment, and management of emarketplaces
represent a fast-growing opportunity, and all types of
services providers are expanding and aligning their offerings
to be better positioned to meet the needs of emarketplace
clients."
According to IDC, the consulting
and implementation provided to deploy the emarketplace
represent only a small piece of an enormous opportunity. "Not
only does an emarketplace need to be integrated with numerous
participants, but those participants need to have the front-end
emarketplace integrated with their own back-end systems," Lipis
said. "For the service firm, this represents an opportunity
to derive ongoing revenue from one initial contract."
Types of services needed by
emarketplace clients include support services, business
strategy, marketing and branding, user interface design,
research, and development, application development and
integration, network development and integration, and site
operations and management.
As in the Internet services
market as a whole, emarketplace service firms are working
hard to meet the needs of startups. Some are accepting
equity as a payment, and others are providing incubator
services.
According to IDC, the service
providers who win the race and are among the first to build
and operate emarketplaces will be adorned with lucrative
awards.
"Being an early leader
in building and operating emarketplaces will provide competitive
advantage in acquiring subsequent business. When we spoke
with vendors, they said experience was one of their top
three criteria when choosing an external service provider
to help develop their emarketplace," said Pooneh Fooladi,
an analyst with IDC's eMarketplace Services research program. "The
service firms that build and operate the emarketplaces
will have the advantage in providing integration services
to them and their participants."
When Websites Play Doctor
According to Business Week:
"Nervous? Suffer from muscle
aches? If some Web sites are to be believed, you may be
harboring irksome parasites. Luckily for you, there's a
solution: The Original Parasite Zapper, a battery-operated
device that, together with certain herbs, will rid you
of viruses, bacteria, and other pests. Just fork over $75,
and you're on your way to being bug-free. Or maybe you've
got more serious problems. With a few quick clicks of the
mouse you'll find Web sites chronicling miraculous recoveries
from cancer, diabetes, lupus, and a host of other ailments.
For just $14.95, you can learn a self-healing method prescribed
by the world's largest ''medicineless'' hospital, in China.
Here, among other things, you will discover the secret
to spontaneous remission of bladder cancer.
Cyberspace is awash in so-called
e-health sites, spawned by consumers' unquenchable thirst
for medical information. George D. Lundberg, editor-in-chief
of a well-respected site called Medscape.com, figures there
could be anywhere from 20,000 to 2 million such sites,
including pages from university medical departments..."
Click
here for the full story.
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