In India, companies like the financial services giant ICICI and several banks like HDFC Bank have already successfully ventured into the online arena. Focused online businesses such as ChemB.com and iPharmaBiz.com have managed to survive the dotcom onslaught.

With a unique window into more than 17 million .com, .net, and .org web addresses, VeriSigns NSI Registrar decided to find out exactly what most companies are using the Internet for. They asked more than 4,000 decision-makers, representing a wide array of industries, about their motivations for developing an online presence and what they expected out of the dotcom economy.

The results are encouraging. Although popular perceptions would lead you to believe that every domain name registered represents a startup business with zero revenue and wild IPO dreams, reality tells a different story. VeriSign found that nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) of businesses that have registered a web address have done so to develop an online presence for an existing business. In other words, these are companies with established business models and real products - the so-called click/brick and mortar companies.

These companies represent the best of the Internet explosion. Without seeking to be revolutionaries, they have nonetheless become the driving force behind the dotcom economy - using the efficiencies and reach of the Internet to extend traditional business models into untapped pools of productivity.

Their expectations for the Internet are right in line with the healthiest outlooks for growing robust business lines. Sixty per cent indicated that they are developing an online presence to attract new customers to their existing businesses. An additional 23 per cent said that they expect to improve customer relations through the use of the Internet. Only 11 per cent indicated that they were motivated by the momentum of the Internet industry, hoping to take advantage of the explosion of e-commerce.

As a contrast, while only 20 per cent of responding companies indicated that they registered a domain name to start a dot com business, nearly half (47 per cent) of those did so to take advantage of the dotcom boom.

It is true, of course, that the click/brick and mortar businesses will face significant challenges integrating their existing business models with their online presence - hence the looming, and very real, specter of consolidation. However, the emerging companies will be the most successful products of an evolutionary process. They will be both stronger and more nimble, with a battle-hardened sense of business in the 21st century.

Furthermore, many of these companies have already overcome significant challenges in developing their online presence in the first place. Businesses reported a relatively even split in the factors that had hindered them from developing an Internet presence. The major inhibitors have been an unclear business case/return on investment (39 per cent), lack of expertise (32 per cent), and cost factors (29 per cent).

In addition to inhibitors, online businesses also reported a number of concerns about the continued development of the Internet as a business tool. Nearly universal among these concerns are the challenge of keeping pace with technology, time spent in site maintenance, and security.

More notable are the patterns that emerge in a comparison of inhibitors and concerns. For example, companies that were troubled by a lack of expertise for an Internet development effort are particularly concerned about keeping pace with Internet technology. Companies that were challenged by creating a business plan for an online presence find security to be of particular importance. And, as most would expect, companies that found cost to be an inhibitor are likewise worried about the cost of Internet technology in the future.

Another notable exception to the general trends in concerns emerged when VeriSign looked at Internet pure-plays - companies whose sole business identity is web-based. Because the Internet is quite literally the life-blood of their business model, they are more particularly concerned with keeping pace with technological development - 44 per cent rate this as a principal concern - than are online businesses in general (34 per cent).

Surprisingly, among the companies that VeriSign spoke with, one highly publicised aspect of online business rated as a non-issue - privacy. The reasons for this are unclear, however, the finding does suggest that privacy is really more of a concern in the realm of consumers, and not one that enters into the business decision-making process for companies looking to establish their place on the Internet.

These concerns point directly toward some of the issues that will need to be resolved as the dotcom economy continues to evolve. These issues will be critical discriminators helping to define the Internet success stories over the next three years.

Arthur Chang is the managing director (Asia-Pacific), VeriSign, Inc and VeriSigns NSI Registrar (the worlds largest domain-name registrar). Since 1996, he has been a columnist for the Hong Kong financial newspaper The Economic Journal. And for the past six years, Chang - acting as a specialised Internet consultant - has provided guidance and knowledge to Internet ventures such as Unicom media (a subsidiary of Unicom), an e-commerce joint venture between General Electric Information Services and China Telecom in Beijing, and China Internet Corporation.