Gerstner takes Cebit between the teeth

IBM chief executive predicts $200bn e-commerce by 2000.

IBM chief executive Lou Gerstner kicked off the Cebit trade show in Hanover last week by proclaiming that the electronic commerce market will reach $200bn by the turn of the century, as long as industry and government sort out global standards.

Sharing the platform with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Gerstner stated: "It's not hyperbole to say that the 'network' is quickly emerging as the largest, most dynamic marketplace the world has ever seen." He then called for an unrestricted market for encryption products.

Cebit, the world's largest IT show, pulled in more than 600,000 punters checking out 7,250 exhibitors.

Ericsson used the event to reveal how it intends to handle the expected increase in demand for mobile phones. It estimates that the number of cellular subscribers will exceed 830 million by 2003. Ericsson delivered a wide-band Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) experimental system NTT DoCoMo that is capable of supporting circuit and packet-switched wireless services at 384Kbps with wide-area coverage.

Fujitsu ICL, the European PC and server arm of Fujitsu, used the show to drop ICL from its title to become Fujitsu Computers across all its European territories.

The event saw one of the first demonstrations of a web-browsing mobile phone. Matra Communication Cellular Terminals is running web-accessing software being defined by the Wireless Application Protocol forum. The software is due to be tested in the summer, with handsets available at the beginning of next year.

Amdahl used Cebit to announce it had struck a deal with bitter rival IBM to license its Transparent Data Migration Facility (TDMF) to IBM Global Services.

Amdahl claims it has 140 TDMF clients, which include AT&T and other companies with multiple data centres. Amdahl charges $60,000 per processor for the TDMF licence.