Welcome to the Initiative. Make yourself at home as you learn about the next generation of business-to-business applications and how Internet Business Services are energizing the industry.
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The Internet Business Services Initiative (IBSi) is a mutual benefit, non-profit corporation formed to assist companies in providing better software solutions to the marketplace.
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The work of the Initiative is carried out through member committees, the Board of Directors and executive staff. The IBSi also sponsors periodic members-only marketing and technical forums and a series of educational seminars and events that are open to the industry.
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Formed in December 1999, the Initiative has announced a general road map for standards development, held its first membership meeting and is developing a series of educational seminars. It offers a speakers bureau with industry and technical experts, and participates in relevant trade events.
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| Member Survey Benchmark Study Fall 2000 Executive Summary |
Survey Presentation (1.2Mb) |
In the late summer and early fall of 2000, the Internet Business Services Initiative (IBSi) undertook its first member survey to determine the state of the industry. Its purpose was to define the special qualities and marketing characteristics of an Internet Business Service. As the first of its kind, the IBSi survey will serve as a benchmark to track the growth of the industry.
The snapshot that resulted from this exercise is of a young yet stable market. The 15 IBSi member companies that participated in the study are backed by almost half a billion dollars in venture capital funding. The average customer user base is over 27,675. While the services today are accessed primarily by small and medium size businesses, there also is a strong presence among enterprise firms and a large portion of the membership expects to move up market.
The picture drawn is one of an extremely interactive industry. Partnering is seen as a particularly important channel for building the customer base. More than half of the members are involved in vertical channel or portal programs and almost half work with either service aggregators or third-party resellers such as VARs. Likewise, all IBSi members currently integrate their services with other companies and are aggressively pursing interoperability among services.
Technical issues and challenges also abound. Consistent with the high-levels of data and operational security generally built into Web-native software schemes, members provide three to six or more security levels. None of the services resell customer or data information. All IBSi members involved in accumulating stored customer information allow users to retrieve or export their data if they decide to leave the service.
According to the members of the IBSi, the most important issues facing Internet Business Services today involve educating the market. There needs to be a fundamental shift in the way customers work and services need to prove themselves with potential customers to build market acceptance. The major concerns facing the market today involved interoperability; educating users on the high-level of security and maintaining that security; and access to reliable broadband capacity. These are all issues that can be resolved with the accumulated experience and successful implementation of Internet Business Services over time.
Summary of Findings
- IBSi members account for $452 million in venture capital, with an average of over $32.25 million in VC funding per company.
- The number of individual user customers at each service ranges from 2,000 to over 96,000 users, with an average of 27,677 users per site.
The number of companies as registered customers at members' sites ranges from 30 to 8,000, with an average of 1,785 companies per service.
- Small and medium size businesses account for almost two-thirds of today's business. At the same time, an average of 131 users from each customer company access the services. This indicates that the small and mid-size businesses that make up the bulk of the IBS market are at the high-end of the scale and that larger firms are starting to adopt Internet Business Services.
- There also is a strong presence in the high-end of the market for a young industry. Companies with 250 or more employees currently represent over 20% of the market and companies with revenues of $250 million dollars or more constitute 28% of the market.
- Companies with over 500 employees are expected to account for a quarter of the market by 2002, growing from today's benchmark of 15%.
- Internet Business Services split their marketing efforts equally between traditional channels such as public relations and advertising, and in building partnerships through vertical channels.
- Almost half of IBSi members work with VARs, system integrators and third-party resellers and this is expected to increase significantly over the next two years.
- Almost half of IBSi members currently work with service aggregators and this is expected to increase over the next two years.
- All members integrate with at least one online business partner today and all plan to increase their integration with other Internet Business Services in the near future.
- The Internet Business Services surveyed upgrade their software or add new functionality an average of 10 times a year.
- IBSi members have been online and open for business an average of three years.
- The average site development time is becoming longer, not shorter.
- No IBSi member resells customer data or preferences. All members that maintain customer data allow users to export this data if they decide to leave the service.
- Most IBSi members have multiple security levels, ranging from three to six layers or more.
- Over two-thirds of the members said they would implement digital signatures in the future, although a significant portion of these said there were technology and marketing issues to be resolved.