Cisco Connect Online: it´s good for business

Until the massive growth of the World Wide Web, business to business electronic commerce was limited to functions appropriate for expensive proprietary WANs and a lot of custom software. But all that has changed. Networked commerce isn´t about back room applications any more. Successful businesses must interact with suppliers and customers around the world. The benefits of a standard IP protocol, combined with increasingly sophisticated commodity hardware and software, make it relatively easy for companies of all sizes to link their suppliers, partners, and customers in a bidirectional flow of information. The Internet has become a tool used to reduce transaction costs, shorten product cycles, expand markets, and-most important-provide rapid response to the customer´s changing needs. Internet commerce in goods and services between companies was estimated at US$8 billion in 1997, according to Forrester Research in Boston. International Data Corporation estimates that business to business sales over the Internet will represent $81.2 billion by 2000. Manufacturing companies lead the way, and Cisco Systems leads the manufacturers. Its Web site, Cisco Connection Online (CCO), launched in August 1996, now generates almost $10 million in sales per day-around $600 million in three months from August through September 1997. Cisco Systems specifically uses the Internet to distribute software and technical data, as well as customer support.