We've hardly got the hang of e-commerce, and it's already too late. Stewart Aslop, a venture capitalist writing in Fortune magazine, says the e in e-business will soon be irrelevant.

It's not that it won't be happening; on the contrary, he says, it will be happening to such an extent that "the difference between e and everything else will be non-existent". Clicks-and-mortar is the new order of the day; in other words, companies will have to be able to serve customers wherever they are.

Online business will be as important as business transactions done in what used to be known in the old days as the real world. "The Web has forever changed the way companies and customers . . . buy and sell to each other, learn about each other, and communicate," Aslop claims.

Unless they integrate the Internet into how they do business, "they won't be businesses any more," he says. It's all very strong language, considering that Internet e-commerce companies - even though their shares famously trade for huge prices - still haven't made any profit on their online operations.

Meanwhile a survey of Irish industry shows 17 per cent of small firms are trading online, but more than half of those questioned for the 3Com Survey of the Irish Networking Industry, said they were not going to introduce e-commerce over the next 12 months.

Nonetheless, Irish shopping sites and Net service companies are plentiful and are a major part of the global explosion in e-commerce.

Nua, an Irish Internet services and consulting firm, for example, has developed a product called NuaPublish which is used by multinationals such Procter and Gamble.

It's all happening, and it's happening at a phenomenal pace.