Is the Internet a passing fad, or a tidal wave which will profoundly alter the business landscape? Based on the incredible growth in Internet use, the continual expansion of the number of Internet users, and -- most importantly -- the sheer value of the Internet as a business tool, one can only conclude that this is no fad. Yet many businesses are uncertain as to how to best utilize this powerful tool, and are unsure how to go about implementing the Internet within their company.

This guide is designed to answer these questions, as well as to provide a handy checklist for use in evaluating Internet service providers.

In virtually every industry, competition has reached a new level of intensity. Mere survival -- let alone success -- requires that a business perform at unprecedented levels of effectiveness. New pressures include on business influencing this trend include:

Business use of the Internet can make a major contribution in every one of these critical areas.

While each of the above issues requires a multifaceted strategy, a common thread is the need to enable communications, both between enterprises and within your own company. Computer-communications networks must thus be a key component of the overall solution. Although such networks have been in common business use for almost two decades, they have been primarily internally oriented. The Internet is taking the business impact of network technology to a new plateau by enabling inter-enterprise communications as easily as intra-company communications.

The Internet is a network of networks. Unlike other public telecommunications networks, it is not managed by a single corporation, government agency, or other entity. Rather, it is a cooperative interconnection of many such single-entity networks.

Although the Internet is often referred to as an "electronic highway," a better analogy is with the U.S. railroad system. Just as no single organization runs the national rail network, no single organization runs the Internet.

The "national rail net" is, in fact, simply the aggregate of many different individual railroads, exchanging rolling stock at agreed-upon locations according to predefined rules. Just as a shipper can send a car on a journey of several thousand miles, across the facilities of several different railroads, two computer users can do business over the Internet without concern for the technical compatibility of their respective Internet network providers. Certain "locations," such as the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX), are agreed-upon points for the exchange of traffic.

As track gauges and other aspects of railroading became standardized during the mid-19th century, the nature of the railroad industry changed dramatically. It evolved from a group of local businesses serving local markets to a truly national industry. The creation of a national marketplace and economy, and a century of economic growth, were the result. Similarly, the emergence of Internet standards is transforming networking from a niche technology, useful for certain specific applications, to the normal way of doing business. This will result in tremendous opportunities for those companies that astutely exploit the potential, and major risks for those that do not.

There are at least six reasons why the Internet is having such a dramatic impact on the scope of business networking applications, and why the Internet has become the foundation for the world's new information infrastructure.

These are:

• Universality - Any business using the Internet can interact with any other business using the Internet. This is by no means true of earlier networking technologies, with their maze of conflicting standards. It was as if you could only ship goods to those companies doing business with the same railroad as yourself, or as if the phone system had only allowed you to call other people whose telephones were the same color as yours.
• Reach - The Internet is everywhere: large cities and small towns throughout the the modern and developing world.
• Performance - Unlike many other public networks, the Internet is inherently a high-bandwidth network. This means that it can handle visual images, audio and video clips, CAD models, and other large electronic objects. It provides its users with a high-function, multimedia window on the world, in addition to handling everyday networking tasks such as electronic mail.
• Reliability - The design concepts for the Internet came out of U.S.Department of Defense work, with a principal goal being to create a network which could continue to function under wartime conditions. Hence, Internet technology is highly robust and reliable. Although, as we shall explain later, there are significant differences in the extent to which different Internet Service Providers (ISPs) actually implement this robustness.
• Cost - Compared with alternative networking technologies, Internet costs are surprisingly low.
• Momentum - There are already an estimated thirty million users of the Internet, and this figure is growing by over 10% per month. Business use is increasing at an even more dramatic rate.

The Internet was originally a government-funded network with restricted access. Beginning in 1987, it began the evolution to commercial status. Today's Internet providers are predominantly for-profit businesses.

The use of the Internet was initially for scientific and academic research. As the Internet began to transition to commercial status, it also became a vehicle for business research. The Internet now provides access to literally thousands of information sources on topics ranging from economic indicators to government regulations.

Yet, until quite recently, the use of the Internet still required a high level of technical expertise, and did not represent a viable option for main-line business activities.

Recent application and technological innovations such as the creation of the World Wide Web, have made the Internet fully accessible to non-technical individuals, and have unleashed a new wave of business applications, as discussed in the next section.

"Once limited to technical and academic applications, the Internet is now being used by a wide variety of companies and people who have embraced it as a tool to help them achieve a competitive advantage in their respective fields. Their uses of the Internet include:

Marketing a product or service encompasses disciplines such as advertising and promotion, distribution of "collateral" product or company information, inside and outside sales, and dealer/distributor support. All of these activities can be greatly enhanced through use of the Internet. Although media attention has focused on the Internet's potential for consumer marketing -- which is indeed substantial -- the Internet is equally powerful in business-to-business marketing.

The World Wide Web is the most recently introduced and well publicized Internet application, and it is superbly well adapted to the marketing realm. The Web is a graphical, intuitive means of disseminating or "publishing" information across the Internet. Information made available via the Web can be rich and multi-sensory; it can include not only plain text; but also colors, multiple fonts, high-quality graphics, sound, and even video clips. Even more important, the information can be made accessible in ways that tailor it to each user of the information.

Some examples of Internet marketing applications include:

B. Product/Customer Support

Maintaining a high degree of customer satisfaction is a key success factor in all industries. Product support and customer service functions are increasingly recognized as critical. But it is not enough to simply provide superlative support; this support must be provided in a cost-effective manner.

To that end, the Internet can greatly reduce the load on support hot-lines while increasing customer satisfaction. For example, by making the proper information available over "the Net", customers can often solve their own problems. The Web can be used to provide information on solutions to common product problems and answers             to frequently asked questions (FAQs). The information can be categorized in multiple ways, allowing customers to easily find the answers they need. This approach can greatly reduce customer staffing requirements.

When a customer support person does need to be contacted, the Internet can help cut down on cost and frustration. Electronic mail offers a solution to telephone tag - and the Internet can integrate your e-mail systems with those of your customers. Electronic forms capabilities can go beyond e-mail and insure that a customer is prompted for the specific information needed to address the problem most efficiently.

Companies are increasingly establishing an Internet presence which combines marketing and product support aspects. Many companies, for example, provide their customers with an integrated Internet resource which encompasses:

Advantages of using the Internet for product support include:

• Reduced hot-line expenses, combined with improved customer responsiveness, as customers are able to solve a broader spectrum of problems themselves.
• Lower printing and distribution costs for product support information (manuals, technical bulletins, etc.).
• More Efficient use of service personnel, who can then selectively focus on the more unusual and difficult customer problems.
• More satisfied customers, who experience wasted time and frustration from telephone tag and slow response.

This was the earliest Internet business application, and is still one of the most popular. For virtually every industry and every business function, a tremendous range of information is available. Some examples include:

• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings
• Government Requests for Bids
• Economic and Demographic Data
• Industry Standards and Specifications
• Total Quality Management (TQM) Information
• Agricultural Information/Outlook
• International Trade Information
• Patent and Trademark Information

There are basically three ways of utilizing the Internet. These are not mutually exclusive, and some companies will require all three.

An individual personal computer may be connected to the Internet via a modem and normal dial-up telephone lines or via Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) technology. In addition, to obtain full Internet capability, appropriate software needs to be installed on the PC. Several software packages are available which provide a graphical user interface (GUI), thereby making Internet resources easy to use. The  functions that such packages provide typically include are:

• electronic mail - for inter and intra business communications.
• file transfer protocol (FTP) - for sending and receiving files (e.g. CAD images).
• access to the World Wide Web Browser - to access the Web.
• Telnet - for logging into remote computer systems.
• other tools - WAIS, Gopher and USENET news enable access to the Internet's vast information resources.

Now that you are familiar with some of the ways in which the Internet can be put to good commercial use, the next step is to choose a suitable provider of Internet services and solutions.

Such providers come in all sizes and orientations, and making the best selection requires some analysis. Remember that this is a communication service which will carry information critical to your business, so choose accordingly. Below are some of the factors to consider when making your decision:

Many Internet providers target their services toward consumers and individual users rather than toward commercial use. Be sure to seek out a provider focused on the needs of businesses. These needs include many of the criteria which follow.

The Internet will carry your business' mission-critical traffic. It must be reliable, available, and deliver high performance. Let's look at each of these requirements in a bit more detail.

In general, the closer a network's Point of Presence (POP) is to your site, the less expensive it will be to connect to the network from your site. Thus, it is advantageous to use a provider with a large national--even international--base of POPs.

It is also important to look at how a given Internet provider is connected to other components of the Net. Going back to the railroad analogy, it is pretty clear that a railroad line which is directly connected to many other lines will offer better service, lower delays, and probably a lower fare than a line which relies on traversing many others to get through. The same is true with the Internet, so it makes sense to look for a provider with as many direct connections as possible to other national and international components of the Internet.

Criteria 4: Service Product Range

Your business may include offices and users of many sizes and needs. It is therefore important to choose a provider with a broad range of services to meet your various needs. Access services generally fall into two areas:

1. Dial-Up - A provider should offer dial connectivity for individual users, as well as for LANs. For higher-speed needs, ISDN delivers 64 Kbps at a cost close to regular analog dial service, so it is highly desirable.
    
2. Dedicated High-Speed - These services provide your site with a full-time link to the Internet. The main criteria here is a range of speeds. A good Internet provider will offer dedicated access at speeds from 56 kbps, through to T-1, and on up to T-3 (45 Mbps). Even though you may be starting at the lower end of this spectrum, it's nice to know you can upgrade as needed without having to change providers.

This guide has endeavored to describe the many changes which are affecting today's corporations. These changes are driving the need for a new business tool which enables communications, especially inter-enterprise communications, to be used as a strategic competitive weapon.

The Internet is such a tool. There is a plethora of Internet applications - from marketing to customer support to collaborative development to electronic commerce - which we have identified and described. Many more applications -- long distance phone calls, television, and video conferencing, to name a few -- are being developed today and many more are still to come.

Your business will benefit in numerous ways through the use of the Internet. Therefore, sooner or later, you will want to first become familiar with and then fully utilize this powerful business tool. This guide has also described eight criteria to aid you in the process of selecting a provider well-suited to your business needs.

Comtek, located in Tarzana, California, was founded in 1994, provides a complete suite of services to meet the needs of commercial users. These services include a wide range of Internet dial; and dedicated access options for both individuals and LANs; security products; training, integration, and consulting; Web server content and hosting; and an array of front-end software options.

If you would like more information about Comtek, or would like to order service, please contact us via phone, or e-mail as shown below.