Ecommerce gets down to business

NEWS Business-to-business transactions will dominate the ecommerce software market over the next three years, according to a report out today from research house, Datamonitor. The company predicts that $2.8bn will be spent on business ecommerce software by 2002. Of this, 78 per cent of sales will derive from investment in distribution channel management, online procurement and supply chain management. According to Datamonitor, the Internet is providing an affordable solution for many companies looking to upgrade their business processes. But the report claims the market for business-to-consumer ecommerce software is becoming relatively less important, with revenue dropping from 41 per cent of the market total in 1997, to an estimated 22 per cent by 2002.