Internet and World Wide Web technologies and opportunities

The Internet has existed for many years. Historically, the Internet was used mostly for file transfer and remote log-on. In recent years, the advance of the World Wide Web (WWW) technologies have driven the usage of the Internet to new applications and at an unprecedented rate. Initially, the new applications were in the areas of information retrieval, using Web browsers to retrieve information at the Web sites. Rapidly, other applications emerged. With new tools such as JAVA and MS-Internet Explorer coming on the Internet every few months, new applications of WWW technologies expand into traditional business application areas such as online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing, and networked enterprises. It seems that the Internet will spread over all businesses and all over the world. With such a wide spread interest in the Internet and tremendous growth rate, the Internet also has its problems. This paper elaborates the technologies of the Internet and WWW and the opportunities for the industry, including software, hardware, and network equipment companies, to overcome these problems and to enable the Internet/WWW to be used for critical business applications. Examples of such applications are also given.