NOW that the hype over e-commerce in the country is apparently on the verge of becoming a reality, the push for e-commerce and other information technology initiatives should expand outside the traditional IT community and involve more Philippine sectors. This is so that the country as a whole would benefit from the e-commerce revolution, not just individual companies, according to Mosaic Communications Inc. president William Torres.

"This is business. This is not just IT, not just something for technical people," Torres told the Inquirer. "I think this year, something very dramatic is happening in the region. Even in the Philippines, investors are coming in. The bottom line is that there seems to be a lot of money coming in for e-commerce companies."

Torres was referring to the dotcom fever that has spread throughout the region, notably in Hong Kong. This e-commerce gold rush has seen the transformation--or at least renaming--of traditional companies into dotcom firms, the acquisition of start-up new media companies, and hype over tech stock listings.

In an effort to help the Philippines take advantage of e-commerce opportunities, the Department of Trade and Industry under Secretary Manuel Roxas II has spearheaded the formation of the E-Commerce Council that aims to formulate and implement the so-called Internet Strategy for Philippines.com or ISP.com. Torres is the convenor for the ECC's market niche subcommittee.

The group held its first strategy conference on April 13.

"Sec. Roxas said that there are so many initiatives, so we need to leverage on all these to come up with something big," Torres said. "He said that there is a need to tie all this into a single story. I would like that, too. I'm not happy reading about individual initiatives--a million-peso investment here, a million peso investment there."

As part of the country's overall Internet strategy, Torres' subcommittee is looking at market niches where the Philippines can become a global player in e-commerce. He said that one niche is outsourcing, but on a level beyond ordinary outsourcing services such as call centers, or even traditional IT technical services like the application services provider market. He cited the consulting services provided for global clients by non-IT firms such SGV & Co.

"All services performed by these outsourcing companies can be translated into e-commerce," he said. "It's just that their clients are companies, not just individual consumers. Perhaps to say that's under e-commerce might be a bit of a stretch. But I say, 'why not?' E-commerce is nothing more than a business process, whether business-to-consumer or business-to-business."

As is the case with any new technology, IT people have been talking about e-commerce for years, but it is only now that more businesses, consumers and government leaders are starting to truly place close attention to it. After all, this is the same case with the Internet that has existed since 1969 but only became commercialized when the World Wide Web was born and companies started seeing its business potential. Of course, hype over tech Nasdaq listings and the resulting crop of young technoprenuer millionaires contributed a lot toward putting e-commerce on the business radar screen. With tech stocks now in a free fall in the Nasdaq, however, the time has come to translate market value into actual revenue as dotcom companies apparently can no longer solely rely on speculation.

"We should not wait for that to happen here. We should start looking for global services we can offer. The question is whether some of these business processes can be located and managed here in the Philippines," Torres said. "The answer is yes, but we need the infrastructure so that people would not think that we are too far away or expensive. We can be the hub for these higher forms of outsourcing."

While it might be true that more non-IT people must get involved and a new strategy is needed to tie up these initiatives, would this be another case of a new "IT champion" from government spearheading an initiative that might be forgotten once he is gone?

"I don't think that e-commerce will disappear. Tomorrow, I might be gone. I might be run over. That's okay. Maybe my contribution is in bringing these people together, because the story must extend outside IT to other constituencies like government, business and media," Roxas said.