Computer weekly has been reporting on the latest development in e-commerce starting to make an impact across the pond and likely to come to the UK.

B2C, or business to consumer intemet businesses were quickly followed by B2B or business to business companies. Business to government or B2G has been the latest fad in countries where government internet development has been sufficient to encourage online procurement for government supplies and services.

In a change of position however, the latest move shifts the corporate market internally from an external one, making the employee the intended recipient of tailored internet services.

The move can be seen as the latest in a line of HR activities geared toward improving the quality of employees lives through providing the correct balance of work and non-work activities, or the correct work-life balance.

The Bank of Americawith over 156,000 staff is one organisation gearing up an internal portal towards its employees giving them a "self-service work environment" providing a range of tools and information aimed at helping them not just in their work activities but in their private lives also. The services could include connections with training services, travel companies, financial services, industry news and share prices. The whole idea being that whether you are living at work or working from home you will have access to every service that you are likely to need.

In the Computer Weekly article well-known IT research group Gartner say that they expect that by 2001 80% of companies will have some form of internal internet portal, a substantially different creature to an intranet.