It is always useful to watch the IT trends in the US to see whether the UK will experience the same effect as by rights the UK is predicted as being two years behind what is happening within the US.

A study released by Jupiter Research predicted that there will be a tremendous growth for business-to-business commerce in the US over the next five years, increasing from $336 billion this year to $6.3 trillion by 2005. This will mainly be dominated by the computing and telecommunications sector, Jupiter reported.

These sectors will become the largest b-to-b market, with sales forecast well over £1 trillion by 2005.

Companies are urged to prepare for this future growth by investing in their infrastructure and budget appropriately so that they will cope with the demands. Those companies that will not be able to keep up the the changing trend will find that they will be dropped from the supply and value chain that interlinks businesses.

The report outlined that the US have a very strong market for internet commerce and this tends to set the standards for the rest of the world, therefore it is important to keep an eye on what is happening over there.