LANTIMES DECEMBER 18, 1997 "CUSTOMERS IGNORING HYPE OF E-COMMERCE VENDORS" Front page story.

The following are excerpts from the article.

"In particular, some users have looked with skepticism at recent annoucements made by Hewlett-Packard and IBM, seeing the moves as nothing more than thinly veiled marketing propaganda."

"There’s a lot of words, but after you peel them away what are you left with?-David Schehr Director of Operations Mentis Corp."

Customers uninterested

" "The whole area is a befuddled mess" , said Chris Stevens senior analyst of E-commerce at Aberdeen Group, Inc. in Boston. "These annoucements are almost off the radar screen of the people who are doin real e-commerce. The disconnect between the vendors and the users is extraordinary. They are so far from providing what users need right now.

"Users are utterly confused. The word E-commerce means nothing right now," said Stevens. "The [technology] suppliers are doing a great job of screwing up the market. They’re worried about cornering the market when they should be worrying about supplying solutions," he said.

"It’s not about Internet Standards anymore, it’s about what products work," said Joe Judge, manager of firewall design and architectureat Fidelity Investment Groups"

Even IBM admits that it may be overselling E-commerce. The company has by no means cornered the market on E-commerce products, even though its ads suggest otherwise.

"The E-commerce market is dramatically screwed up," Stevens said. "The users know what they want to do very clearly, but they are clearly dissatisfied with the suppliers.