What we believe is going to be very important is the delivery of traditional software and services and hardware over the Net. That's a form of electronic marketplace.

The fundamental issue is: In the world of the Internet, is there a place for a packager of services? Does the customer want to go surf the Net and go to every one of 50,000 Web sites? Or will people pay a reasonable amount for somebody to go out and preselect and package what they want? My guess is they will both coexist.

Visit USA.gov and you'll find thousands of directorates, agencies, boards, offices, and services replete with overlapping responsibilities, ancient priorities, and divided accountability.

Compensation needs to be predominately performance-driven. If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM's case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn't make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn't make millions of dollars.

HARDWARE ....................SOFTWARE
Car...................................Petrol
Tube-light, fan....................Electricity
Book.................................Story
Tape-recorder..................Music recorded
TV.....................................Serials, TV programmes etc
Mobile...............................Symbian, Lollipop, Kitkat etc
Computer.........................MS DOS, Linux, Windows etc
Brain................................Mind
Society.............................Governance
Universe..........................GOD!!
So GOD is the Ultimate software, THAT runs the entire Universe from the spinning of an electron to the explosion of stars and formation of galaxies!!

If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM's case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn't make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn't make millions of dollars. My salary was the same for 10 years. It was all performance-based.