Stories by: Sue Bushell

Australian researchers may soon produce a new Internet search system with unprecedented search capabilities to help individuals and organisations retrieve information from the plethora of new data types now populating the net.

On the racetrack, as in all forms of business today, speedy delivery separates the winners and losers. Using the right tools can give an SME outsider the front running in business just as it can on the track.

Despite 10 years of procurement and contracting reform, US regulations are still so complex and procurement operations so fragmented that they are severely limiting governments’ ability to cut costs and streamline procurement operations.

The IT&T industry is justly delighted that science and innovation have finally come to the forefront of Australian public debate, even if they have been placed there only because this is an election year.

Streamlining the procurement function has moved firmly into the sights of businesses out to achieve ever-greater efficiencies and savings, thanks to the mass adoption of the Internet and e-commerce.

A large international company signs an IT infrastructure outsourcing deal incorporating the purchase of existing assets by the vendor and transfer of IT staff, in confident expectation of achieving immediate cost reductions.

In one sense the B2B e-marketplace portends a fundamental revolution in buyer-supplier relationships - one that will dramatically alter the procurement process for office supplies, raw materials and manufactured goods.

E-CRM - CRM for the connected economy - holds out the next great promise of improved productivity and enhanced profits. It's what Cap Gemini Ernst & Young vice president Andrew Keene calls "the stairway to heaven".

You survived Y2K so well that it's now a faded memory. Your enterprise resource planning implementation is finally done or at least on track and your CRM (customer relationship management) work is well under way. Now, with time and technology marching on you're energetically tackling the challenge of turning your business into an e-business, knowing that to compete successfully in today's high-velocity business environment, you'll have to constantly accelerate your time to market for products and services.

When Alvin Toffler described technology as "That great, growling engine of change" in his 1970 book Future Shock, the Internet was barely Arpanet and a mobile phone was a telephone on a long extension.

In the new economy do hot skills equal cold cash? Well, yes, no and maybe according to the first local e-commerce salary review.