Rade was in Australia recently for Computron's user conference and said that, as CEO of a software company focused on the global 2000, he spends a large amount of time meeting with the crème de la crème of world commerce from both the public and private sector.
He said that while the benefits of e-commerce and the dot-com enterprise are being promulgated, CEOs of large transaction intensive companies fear becoming irrelevant or disintermediated.
Rade said that most of Computron's customers left the 1990s exhausted and with their IT resources substantially depleted. "Their ability to do new operational learning for the new Web economy is very restricted," he said.
Against that backdrop, Rade claimed that CEOs are saying that they have to be relevant in the 21st century, developing the clicks and mortar, virtual corporations and links between customers and partners to create so-called virtual trading communities.
Tapping into fear is a recognised marketing strategy, and Rade said it is the motivation behind Computron's products under the banner of E-Cellerator.
According to Rade, the philosophy is very simple. "Transform yourself from a bricks and mortar company to a clicks and mortar company. Don't try to pretend to be a dot-com company. Use your assets, minimise the liabilities and make the transformation in an evolutionary fashion.
"Look for ways to create business to business integration opportunities by extending the systems and externalising the systems so that you can do the things that dot-coms do, and still take advantage of your infrastructure," he said.
Rade said that there is a backdrop of tired companies with high IT investment that have a need to act like dot-coms. They have two kinds of problems-creating and managing knowledge throughout the whole value network and the conducting transactions across the whole value network.
