. . more the interface among companies than the internal workings of a large company. Many of the companies I work with are so shallow there really is no "internal". All systems face customers, partners, vendors, and their own outside sales reps. This is common with wholesalers, importers, small manufacturers, professional organizations and the like.

When a customer (who is often much larger) says "this is how you will communicate with us", then that's exactly the way you communicate with them. If this happens to be EDI, then you contract with an EDI service. If it means upgrading to Office XP, you do that. If it's .NET, then .NET is what you use.

I think many companies will start by using this stuff for their own outside staff and branch offices, for which it looks very attractive. Then they'll start insisting partners and vendors use their established communications methods.

The process will be accelerated by basic service being very low cost - and it will stay low cost - but more and more "add-on" services will become more and more necessary to use the system effectively. These will be bundled and unbundled and rebundled constantly, with ever changing costs - and always "in response to customer demand".

The fact that a bunch of big company IS departments are dragging their feet on upgrading internal systems becomes less and less important in the overall picture.