IBM's electronic commerce solution: CommercePOINT [Technical forum]

When businesses first began to adopt the Internet as a communication tool, using it as a direct sales channel was the idea that held the most allure for them. Unfortunately, the very features that made the Internet so attractive to businesses—its openness, global reach, and ease of use—were also its greatest impediments to exchanging money, intellectual property, and products securely and reliably over such a channel. Simply put, the Internet was not designed to address the unique needs of a marketplace.