EDITOR'S NOTE: MAKING E-BUSINESS EASY AND POWERFUL

A few days ago I ordered some sweaters on the Web from an apparel company. The company had done such a good job of designing its Web site that the only difficult part for me was dusting off my monitor display so I could see what color choices were available. From my viewpoint as a customer, e-business on the Web is easy: I get what I want, when I want it—quickly and efficiently.

Today, I used a Lotus Notes database to retrieve some marketing brochures about IBM software products. Using an extranet, our business partners access the same database to get information they need to sell IBM products and services to their customers. From my viewpoint as an end user, e-business is powerful: it helps IBM and its partners do business together by sharing information.

But, as many of you know, e-business—while easy and powerful for the end user—can introduce complexity and limitations for the IT staff. Wouldn’t it be nice to have e-business solutions that are easy and powerful from your point of view? We at IBM think so, and that’s why we deliver products and services aimed at making it easy for you to locate resources in your network, connect people with the information they need, and provide secure access throughout your enterprise.

Like the apparel company from which I ordered my sweaters, you can use IBM hardware and software to easily and inexpensively:

• Design a user interface so that customers can access information about inventory, prices, and other data as they need it—even if the information is stored in different databases on different servers.
• Create security policies to assure that unauthorized users cannot access your company’s internal data, and that customers can safely transmit credit card numbers over the Internet.

e-business can be easy and powerful for you. IBM recently brought together its industry-leading security and networking software offerings under the SecureWay™ brand—a comprehensive, standards-based suite of offerings designed to extend the reach of your e-business. Read about these offerings throughout this issue, and see how we can help you succeed—easily and powerfully.

Larry Kunz
Editor, SecureWay Connection