Ebay Market Share

How to dominate the online auction sale off sale off sale mart Jeffrey Phillips Brian Somok Xiaoke Zheng administrator Summary Background e request Inc history September 1995 funded as a furbish up proprietorship. May 1996 incorpo arranged in California. April 1998 reincorporated in Delaw atomic upshot 18. September 1998 completion of initial public shoting October 2002 acquired PayPal Product Online Auction E re totallyy day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, millions of people from all(prenominal) over the orbit go shopping at online auctions. This is not an extravaganza e embayment, with a 76% look at of the auction site commercializeplace place, reports 42. million users and a growth factor of 100% per Year Porters basketball team Forces Analysis Rivalry Rivalry is real intense. Yahoo had to overtake up Japan and Australia online auction sites in 2003 because of low margin in this securities industry even if Yahoo made capital investment in these gondola cardinal sites beforehand. Number of firms Online auction firms www. e bay laurel. com, www. overstock. com, www. ubid. com, www. yahoo. com, www. amazon. com, www. CQout. com, www. bidville. com, etc. The large(p) number of firms in this commercialize reflects the intense controversy among those sites. Margin profit is decreased to a relatively low level. Bay could still survive because of its scale of miserliness and substantially re editation. However, eBays growth in 2004 was much wasteder than in 2003. Sh atomic number 18holders put much pressure on eBay, and eBay had to read upright its pricing on alter services on the short run in come in to come across peoples short condition expectation. However, he is risking his longsighted term taxation and news report. Fixed cost Essentially, dogged costs on online auction market ar rather low purchasing programming engineering science patents, web, administration, recognize, accounting, staff, and daily operations. Product assortediationDifferentiation depends on how the operation is performed. thither is not too much difference among un akin online auction companies in web processing efficiency and tape transport efficiency, scarcely eBay is more(prenominal) contented than separates, due to their lengthy expertise in the market. eBay differentiated itself by compound PayPal payment system, which is famous for its pledge, sporty rate and net fit utility. eBay offers a cheap transaction topple rate, as well. It has greatest number of users by cold, which offers tenuous internet utility. virago used to be a substitute proceeds returnr.However, since 1999 virago added auction module in its bank line line. eBay likewise encroached on amazons corner by adopting fixed expense functions like cloud it straight simplyton and purchasing www. half. com. eBay and amazon suck up been slight different and in that respectfore rivalry has increased a modest. How ever, there is still an demonstr able-bodied gap between them in m championtary value of allot model and softw ar development. Amazon built its reputation with high-end users. It has a friendly and succinct transaction interface, which offers superior product mix. Amazon is utilizing Porters value scheme and has not changed this for years.On the different hand, eBay is a large confederacy of small purchasers and denounceers who deal with single-item proceeding at negotiable harms. It has a created cost good by scale of economy. roughly goods traded on eBay are secondhand, and eBays blood line changes more rapidly than Amazons. eBay is actually taking Porters cost strategy. Different line of merchandise models result in different m unrivalledtary operation. eBay generated $441 million kale in 2003 on $2. 17 billion revenue compared with Amazons much smaller $35 million profit on far more revenue &8212 $5. 3 billion. eBay has a more liquid and good financial structu re.Besides, these two companies are most(prenominal) valued by their proclaim network/community. Most guests arrogatet hold between auction and fixed price sell very often part because they are rooted in the community culture of either network. They dont draw incentives to change their current manner of transaction if it is satisfactory. Different business models and different networks are enough to place these two companies in different niches without too much rivalry. Barriers of New Entrants New freshers seize every luck to expand their market share. eBay still has a dominant market share of online auction.His reputation is a sweeping force in hold oning his good performance. However, eBay has to be cautious in every marketing decision. His mistakes leave be taken payoff by these brand- cleanfangled-fashioned comers. For example, www. bidville. com , an online auction site, recently experienced a dramatic increase in new member registration subsequently eBay a nnounced they would raise their itemization fees for venders. eBay took a prompt response by resuming the listing fee grit to the original level. eBay didnt win anything in this price adjustment and readjustment, only when eroded his reputation.Essentially in this online auction market, whoever has the most take a leak actualisation, wins the game. remunerate now, Bidvilles disadvantage in separate recognition puts Bidville out as a possible alternative to eBays market home temporarily. eBay should think around more to maintain his piddle recognition on the long run. Patents eBay does not hold any tonality patented technology. A new newbie could soft emulate eBays interface. High cost of intromission eBays most effective barriers are its large network and credible reputation. It is rather arduous for a new crank to build a new network starting with no users. We can verify this by how new air ticketing companies grow. ) The only expressive style to start a network fr om a reasonable size is to go for an online auction market from an lively online website company which already has a network, just as Yahoo and Amazon did. A new entrant must(prenominal) also demonstrate citationability and capability to customers and payment providers ( belief card, PayPal, eWallet, etc. ). New entrants must prove their attempts of efficient and honorable legal proceeding, to both purchasers and marketers. Why would buyers and vendors bother to reposition from a sound existing online auction site to a new one?Incentives to switch imply discounts, coupons, accumulative reimbursement like shop at miles, complements from other services an entrant or their co operate company offers, and higher- tint service in terms of timely and elegant shipping. All of these are trivial precisely not necessarily effective gross revenue methods. Effectiveness depends on a super sales strategy which is based on keen insight of business dynamics and human group dynamic s. It is hard for a new entrant to find an experienced strategist, and even if it does, there is still no guarantee to gain market share.This market is basically first-mover dominant. Furthermore, it is unlikely for payment companies like credit card companies or other electronic payment providers to brook a new entrant, because profitability is unclear. The revenue for successful new entrants go forth be low at the beginning and stable on the long run. However, expenses will be extremely high at the beginning. A new company archaicly survives within a short term unless it has a very generous percentage of leverage or a large amount of venture capital, and leverage is only available for public companies. on that pointfore, a new entrant can likely only be an existing company that operates in other markets. It should either be sufficiently self-funded or nominate a very strong, persuasive income statement and business be after to prove liquidity and gain leverage. Since the ea rnings bubble, venture capitalists are very cautious in investing in IT companies, especially Business-to-Customers or Business-to-Business ecommerce companies. (Check the performance of eBay during and after internet bubbles. ) Essentially, the scale of economy is very obvious in the online auction market.The value of an online network is proportional to the number of users squared. The scale of economy will naturally lead to a monopoly. A new entrant should either license a caper cake system or employ a third-party payment platform company that already integrates sham prevention system in its service. Brand loyalty First of all, eBay has been operating in this market since the beginning of e-commerce. A lot of e-commerce companies beat failed since the internet bubble. eBay has successfully survived because of the convenience and simplicity of its service. It has gained popularity and built loyalty among customers.It has a capture identity system, and every user has a record of past minutes. eBay has a sound rating system for every buyer and seller to piece credibility amongst the users. eBays user accounts work like passports of their personal credit and reliability. Most customers of eBay are long-term users therefore, they will not attempt humbug in their transactions. If they do, their rating suffers. All customers flow to trust each other because transactions are transparent to the 3rd party supervisor, eBay. eBay has successfully glum their online auction site into a community which has a cohesive culture.Photos of items to be sold greatly enhance the community value and establish good humour and trust between sellers and buyers. (eBays success has influenced Amazon to adopt a identical policy in its online transactions recently. ) New entrants are competing against a community as well as a company. It is rather difficult to build a new culture and a new community. There expertness be some other narrow auction niches available, but eBay o ffers nearly any product available. For example, eBay has online auctions for cars. However, since cars are large purchases, people tend to be cautious in purchasing them.They must inspect the cars in person, and the buyers and sellers tend to haggle in person. Online auctions dont seem contributory to the secondhand car market. As one would expect, eBay doesnt assume much revenue from car transactions, and any other online car auction websites are not likely to generate high revenues. Such specialized auction markets have uncertain viability. In the example of a car transaction, there are two types of creditability involved. One is buyers trust of eBay Will eBay protect the buyers cover? The other is buyers trust of sellers Will sellers defraud the buyers or exaggerate the quality of their cars?Shipping is also a major cost in this transaction. Most buyers obviously favor in-person transactions. There is little market space for online auction providers. In fact, there are free o nline bulletin boards that provide used car sale teaching. They make it difficult for paid online car auctions to exist at all. Mostly, the viability of much(prenominal) specialized auction markets is doubtful. so, there is express mail chance for new entrants. Substitute Products The most important merit of fixed-price online retail is that a buyer does not have to wait for an auction to end. It is challenge to shoppers who prefer straightforward sales.They value their time more than the small price change. It is basically a tradeoff between time and price. Since online auction and fixed online retail target people with different personalities, these two products necessityly dont conflict with each other. eBay expanded its market by adding fixed-price features to its online transactions, such as Buy It Now. Half. com is a fixed price online retail web site which is admited by eBay. This shows that eBay is flexible in its business model. On the other hand, Amazon, a traditio nal online fixed-price retail web site, launched its auction feature in 1999.Here, fixed-price retail acts fairly like a complement. However, it is a complement only when a company is involved in both types of sales. It is especially beneficial for the companys network utility. eBay expanded its community (network) by adding fixed price retail feature, as Amazon did by adding auctions. Both of them successfully combined these two functions together, which merged these two markets into one, and gave customers greater convenience by allowing them to decide which trend to purchase goods impromptu. However, there is less differentiation between eBay and Amazon. handed-down retail is more prevalent when the buyer must check the product in person or shipping is difficult or overpriced. eBay has had to build a strong creditability by reservation sure all the descriptions of online items to be sold are precise, complete and correct. Without this reliability, customers would switch to tr aditional retail stores. For those goods which are hard to price without observation, eBay cannot supplant traditional retail. This is particularly true for specialized items such as cars, jewelries, and plastic surgeries, all of which have too many a(prenominal) an(prenominal) details to be taken bursting charge of online.Online transactions seem impossible for these goods. The switching cost from online auction to traditional retail or fixed-price online is essentially high. For fixed-price online, sellers have to pay the shop fee for Amazons storage plant. For traditional retail, sellers have to pay for the storage fee and shelf rental fee. These extra fees, which are switching costs, are enough to discourage single item sellers, who are main customer category of eBay, to switch. Buyer business leader Customers price aesthesia Online auctions dont excite sellers for storage of their goods. Fixed-price sites might charge sellers for storage.Traditional retailers incur overh ead costs. Sellers have incentives to sell via online auction. On the other hand, online auctions in the first place deal with unpackaged new products or secondhand products. Most buyers of such products are familiar with eBay, so sellers are more prone to sell via online auction. Buyer bargaining tycoon is weakened. Customers negotiating power As I analyzed above, eBay is a large network of small buyers and sellers who principally deal with single-item sales. A seller generally sells one item to one buyer on eBay, so eBay has high prices and high margins when providing services for many buyers and sellers.Online auction site, recently experienced a dramatic increase in new member registration after eBay announced they would raise their listing fees for sellers. eBay took a prompt response by resuming the listing fee back to the original level. eBay didnt win anything in this price adjustment and readjustment, but eroded his reputation. Essentially in this online auction market, whoever has the most name recognition, wins the game. Right now, Bidvilles disadvantage in name recognition puts Bidville out as a possible alternative to eBays market space temporarily. Bay should think intimately more to maintain his name recognition on the long run. Patents eBay does not hold any key patented technology. A new entrant could easily emulate eBays interface. Buyer Power Customers price sensitivity Online auctions dont charge sellers for storage of their goods. Fixed-price sites might charge sellers for storage. Traditional retailers incur overhead costs. Sellers have incentives to sell via online auction. On the other hand, online auctions mainly deal with unpackaged new products or secondhand products. Most buyers of such products are familiar with eBay, so sellers re more prone to sell via online auction. Buyer bargaining power is weakened. Customers negotiating power As I analyzed above, eBay is a large network of small buyers and sellers who mainly deal with si ngle-item sales. A seller generally sells one item to one buyer on eBay, so eBay has high prices and high margins when providing services for many buyers and sellers. Supplier Power Suppliers to eBay offer technology patent, legal support for intellectual property, and fraud prevention systems. eBay has great pressure to prevent fraud, since its reputation is at stake. Buyers and sellers care about very much about their security.Online auction fraud in 2004 made up 16% of all consumer complaints last year, and 48% in the sub hang of internet-related complaints, topping the list. eBay has 0. 01% fraud rate of all transactions, but these isolated incidents feature wide media coverage, which discourages many potential customers. eBay is still improving its fraud prevention system. The fraud prevention system is launched by Microsoft Inc. and Visa Inter national Inc. As this system is undeniable to eBay, it has little leverage to negotiate a better price. Many online retail systems l ook at fraud prevention system, but there is only one supplier in the market.It has great bargaining power. Complements PayPal, as an online payment solution, is a good complement of eBays online auction business. PayPal is a neutral mediator based on the financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit separate, support by a proprietary fraud prevention system. Transactions on PayPal are of low risk to both sellers and buyers. PayPal accepts property from the buyer in one of the three ways. Charging the buyers credit card Debiting the buyers checking account Charging from the buyers PayPal account. The buyer can unceasingly send check to his/her PayPal account.Then PayPal will email the seller about the payment made by the buyer. The seller will receive bullion in one of the three ways. The seller might have his own PayPal account. The payment will directly transfer to his/her account. The seller might receive a check from PayPal. PayPal directly deposits the payment into the sellers checking account. Buyers care about security. Buyers credit card numbers are only shown to PayPal. That is safer than online payment directly by credit card. Buyers also care about the cost. For transactions between PayPal customers, theres no transaction fee.PayPal makes money on the float when customers money sits in their account, PayPal is collecting interest on it. Customers generally dont care about the interest that PayPal collects on their deposits. Customers also care about ease of use. PayPal is one of the mere(a)st services for online transactions. All a buyer has to do is to provide his/her name, e-mail address, credit card information, and billing address. For business accounts on PayPal, merchants are aerated a 2. 2% discount rate + 30 cents on the transaction. It is better than the rate charged by merchant banks for judge credit cards, in most cases. eBay Micro StrategiesIncrease brand recognition Expand the auction market by introducing PayPal to more online auction markets assent card companies charge more for Internet-enabled merchant accounts (the accounts the merchants need to accept credit card payments on the Internet), because of the high cost to main security. Therefore, credit cards become too expensive for smaller purchases. PayPal might negotiate with credit card companies for smaller fees for their subscribers. They can cooperate to share the market in the following way Merchant accounts on PayPal will be charged less by credit companies than those on other online payment platforms.Therefore it can increase the number of small purchases on eBay auction. Nowadays, credit cards are the primary means of purchasing air tickets and recording frequent flier miles. eBay should inscribe the air ticketing markets. It definitely can offer the homogeneous service with PayPal. PayPal should cooperate with more airlines and online ticketing websites. If they can integrate PayPal into ticket sales websites, eBay will have a ma ssive potential market in air ticketing and also increase its network utility. eBay should acquire a greater online auction market share by educating online customers that PayPal is the online currency.Yahoos purse failed in the online marketplace. It was not easy to establish their own online payment platform, partly because the online payment concept goes against Yahoos traditional business model. PayPal should make use of its competitive advantage and offer Yahoo and other websites its specialized solutions. Perfect its proprietary fraud prevention system, which is essential to its success. eBay should let its customers, conjunctive online transaction sites, online airline ticketing sites, and credit card companies all feel that transactions through eBay will lower their costs and be more valuable. Bay should cooperate with shipping companies, and make its online transactions more lucrative eBay should work with Phish Report Network and other anti-phishing organizations more eff iciently in order to prevent fake online auction sites taking its market share and negatively charged the whole markets reputation eBay should work with bundle developers to amend the security, efficiency, and adaptability of its database. eBay should convince customers that there is no intentional bidding up air involved in its online auction practice Develop real name feature for customers.Put some restrictions on new sellers in expensive merchandise transaction or large volume sale until they have a good track record. Expand to international market, decrease national boundary barriers in terms of payment (credit card/PayPal) and shipping. Cooperate with local anaesthetic equivalent companies or localize by itself. Mediate between buyers and seller at Security C attain. Respect both sides privacy. Solve conflicts in ultraconservative way. Dont take risk of eBays reputation. eBay Today eBay is the worlds foremost online marketplace. through with(predicate) reliable customer s ervice, efficient information exchange, and by utilizing the latest technology, eBay has created an auction-based market community of an efficiency unheard of foregoing to the internet revolution. Competitive Advantage eBay has used its first-mover advantage to establish itself as the most reliable and, more importantly, largest auction house on or off the internet. In 2003 alone, more than 30 million people interchange over $20 billion. Due to the size and diversity of its user base, eBay is able to offer a wider selection of merchandise than any online retailer.This is made workable by the virtual nature of eBays market sellers can market obscure items to a global market as easily as and more cheaply than they could put an ad in their local paper. historied for matching buyers and sellers across the world with the most extreme items, eBay has developed immeasurable value in its brand name. eBay has become a household denomination synonymous with an eclectic online marketplace. eBay comes to the mind of any buyer looking for that rare or rarely-cheap item any seller hoping to get rid of a great deal anything knows a buyer is lurking somewhere on eBay.The site has become an easily identifiable rallying point akin to a popular leap club on a global scale everyone whos anyone is thereand everyone else too. eBays Macro Strategy eBay seeks to maintain a high level of consumer patronage by capitalizing on its unique positioning as an internet marketplace. Globalization. Since eBay is a virtual marketplace, eBay can establish language localized sites in other countries that have access eBays full auction database. Since the seller handles the shipping details, each seller whitethorn determine the extent to which they enter the global market. Bay has already expanded into 150 countries around the world. worldwide transactions require little additional bookkeeping cost trance their benefit to the consumer is enormous every buyer and seller has access to the l argest market possible. Communication By allowing buyers and sellers to meet and communicate online, eBay is able to minimize the costs of remote market re chase and various(prenominal) exchanges of information across states and borders. This interplay is essential to mutually amicable transactions on which eBay is based.To encourage fair transactions eBay provides an efficient feedback system to allow buyers and sellers to benefit from collective experience, giving customers a strong social incentive to honor each transaction. Integration Through its acquisition of PayPal eBay gained not only market share, but also vertical integration key to its long-term success. By embracing the payment method most commonly used on its site rather than forcing an unpopular one on its user base, eBay has not only retained the existing PayPal user base but expanded to those consumers previously unsure of which method to use.In 2003 there were 40 million PayPal accountsalmost twice as many as the previous yearand these customers transferred $12 billion across 38 countries. Diversification In addition to normal auction bidding, eBay now offers a Buy-it-Now option. Sellers set fixed maximum prices at which the auction will close before it begins. This attracts auction-wary consumers from other e-commerce sites outside of the strict auction market and effectively competes with amazon. com and froogle. com for fixed-price transactions.By allowing independent sellers to maintain storefronts online, eBay seeks to extend its position to include an even wider range of transactions, thus not only broadening its arouse but securing ties to more conservative consumer bases. The Future of eBay Industry Trends What originally began as a small industry of auctions for collectibles has mushroomed into a behemoth encompassing individual sellers, small businesses, and large retailers. The e-commerce industry is constantly growing, and many businesses rely on the reputation of eBay or one o f their competitors to sell their products.As the market grows, a wider demographic range of consumers will be purchasing an increasing number of products online. For example, teenagers are the target consumers of very recent products such as cadre phone ring tones and games, many of which are available exclusively online. As such varied consumer groups are emerging in the online market, there is more room for differentiation perhaps some niches are being created. Therefore, the barriers to incoming will decrease as the market expands. Competitive Trends eBay has a solid foothold as the canonical online auction site.They have a niche as an enormous community with an extremely high success rate of matching buyers and sellers. eBay is distinguished by its availability of single, used, and/or rare items, and for its floating prices. They are adequately differentiated from their competitors, and they possess roughly 70% of the online auction market share. However, due to the relativ ely low switching costs and innovation barriers inherent in a web market, eBay must continue to be rather defensive of their position, against current competition and potential new entrants. contemporary CompetitorsAmazon and Yahoo Auctions are the main competitors of eBay. Ubid. com has 14% of the market share, but they have a different niche than eBay by appealing to business-to-consumer transaction. Amazon may pose a threat to eBays utter assurance they are consistently bringing retailers into e-commerce. However, this comes with a great burden. Whereas eBay has roughly no overhead, Amazon needs to store and move vast quantities of inventory. Currently, Amazons revenues are considerably greater than eBays (about twice as much), but their costs are so high that eBays annual profits are roughly ten times Amazons.Alternatively, Amazon might choose to expand its auction operations, trying to nudge eBay from its niche. Amazon would have to establish a network, a community, on the scale of eBays in order to challenge them directly. Although this could be time consuming and costly to implement, counselling on transactions in which they are merely the broker and carry no cost could greatly increase their long-term profits. Yahoo poses little threat to eBay. While they theoretically have potential for growth similar to Amazon, they lack Amazons reputation.They also lack the cost-free transactions in which eBay luxuriates. New Entrants Online auctioning doesnt have high costs of entry, especially the way eBay operates All a new entrant needs is merchant software there is no need for warehouses or expensive machinery. However, many companies have tried to enter this lucrative market and have failed. New entry is difficult because eBay has an enormous community, which gives tremendous network value to both buyers and sellers. any entrant would have to build up a network from scratch. Conceivably, if a new company entered a niche market, e. g. uctions of teenage clothing and cellular phone phone accessories, they could survive, but such a market would likely be too small to gain any measurable market share. Alternately, a website that already has a large community would be able to enter more easily. For example, Craigs List has a network of millions of users, who rely on it for matching them up with people who can fulfill their specific needs. It would be simple enough to add an auction section to the site, and take advantage of this existing network to compete with eBay. Froogle, a new service from Google, may forever change the way online shopping is done.While it currently is a beta version, it looks to be a promising engine for online shoppers to quickly search nearly all online stores for the products they desire. While Froogle isnt an entrant to the online auction market (yet), it is sure as shooting the beginning of a powerful new substitute service. Froogle may be very dangerous to eBay for many reasons. Google already has a huge network of search-users and advertisers. If vendors (especially specialized vendors, as many on eBay are) can set up their own online stores and be rear for free on Froogle, they have less of a reason to pay eBay for its high access. Bay certainly still has a lot going for it, (security and reputation) but may soon find its network challenged by Froogle users. eBays Response eBay recently started Business. eBay, a new business-to-business online auction that spans all sectors, from mining to farming. eBay is aware that they may need to accommodate larger retailers in order to grow, and to challenge Amazons growth in this direction. If Amazon decides to challenge eBays community appeal, thus eBay must block this attempt any way they can. A simple method would be to start a price war. Bays costs are so negligible compared to Amazons that Amazon could not possibly survive a price war. EBay could almost give away auctions to sellers, whereas this sort of competition would bankrupt Am azon. If a new entrant emerges, eBays best bet is to rely on the value of their community. until now a company trying to enter into a niche market would have a difficult time building a network large enough to attract eBay customers. In the rare case of an established community site entering into online auctioning, eBay should engage in a price war if they believe this sites community is comparable to theirs. Bay is famous for their extreme efficiency, and any entrant would likely be somewhat inefficient due to their inexperience. eBays best response to Froogle is to assert their security and reputation to their users If you buy from eBay, you know you will have a safe and fraud-free transaction, especially if you pay with PayPal. On the other hand, if someone buys from an online shop found on Froogle, he has no idea how reliable the vendor is, or if his credit card information will be safe.If buyers are indisposed to engage in potentially insecure transactions outside of eBay, b uyers and sellers resembling will continue to complete their transactions through eBay. Summary eBay virtually monopolizes the online auction market, due to their large network value, extremely low costs, reputation for security, and efficient operations. When confronted with competition, eBay either relies on its community niche, or buys out the competition (i. e. Half. com and PayPal). They have created a market where entry is very difficult, and competitors are relatively powerless, particularly given the threat of a price war.These advantages should ensure eBays continued domination of online auctions in the future. However, they should court larger retailers, as Amazon has, to expedite their growth. eBay is likely to stay the leading online auctioneer for quite some time, as long as they remain adaptable to the ever-dynamic online market. eBay has proven to be a successful chameleon in the past, making lucrative acquisitions and modifying its business model, depending on the s tate of the online market. As long as eBay continues to aggressively maintain its community and reputation of security, it will dominate the online auction market.References 1. Crockett, Roger O. No shaping? No Problem. BusinessWeek online. . October 23, 2000. 2. eBay 2003 Annual Report. . 3. Hof, Rob. Meet eBays Auctioneer-in-Chief. BusinessWeek online. . May 29, 2003. 4. Hof, Robert D. The eBay Economy. BusinessWeek online. . August 25, 2005. 5. Lewis, Marilyn. eBay and Amazon. webservicespipeline. . celestial latitude 22, 2004. 6. Perez, Juan Carlos. Online auction providers grapple with fraud. Computerworld. . Februrary 17, 2005. 7. Roberts, Paul. Microsoft, eBay, Visa form Phish Report Network. Computerworld. . February 14, 2005