ABSTRACT
According to International Data Corporation, the Internet commerce market will top the U.S.$425 billion mark by 2002. A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of Global 100 companies found that 85 percent see Ebusiness as an investment priority over the next three years. Enabling this unprecedented demand for E-services will require business managers to increasingly become technically savvy so that they may make informed decisions on where the IT dollar is spent. As E-commerce business requirements become more challenging to implement from both a cost and technical perspective, companies are looking to outside providers to supply expertise in application development, as well as to offer connectivity options and application hosting facilities. By outsourcing a portion of their infrastructure, a company will not only reduce its fixed costs because it will not have to build additional infrastructure, but it can also contain its E-business variable costs by purchasing or canceling incremental services as directly dictated by business demand.
