RICHARD L. PTAK, as Vice President and Research Director at D.H. Brown Associates, Inc., provides strategic and tactical advice on the planning, selection and development of solutions, for the management of distributed systems and networks. His column appears regularly in Network World.

JP MORGENTHAL is President of NC.Focus, an IS advisory firm specializing in providing researchand consulting in network application technologies. Mr. Morgenthal, an Internet Week columnist, has published numerous articles in leading trade publications, and is a popular speaker at industry events.

SIMON FORGE has over 20 years experience in the information industries. He consults in telecommunications strategy and futures, as well as in the implementation of large Web-based electronic commerce systems using RAD. He is the author of Chaotics: An Agenda for Business and Society in the 21st Century,with co-authors G. Anderla and A. Dunning.