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So predicts Forrester Research. Yet, at the same time, the field is so new that e-commerce site-building among the Fortune 500 is a long, brutish and multimillion-dollar exercise in integration and operation. And even though hundreds of companies are rushing to offer e-commerce hosting services, they, too, suffer through the growing pains of the technology.

The experience of these commerce service providers (CSPs)--who add commerce-based applications or services to network hosting--is perhaps the best guide to the emerging infrastructures, products and practices surrounding e-commerce that businesses can get. These CSPs, some dedicated to commerce and others that consider it part of their overall hosting mission, are most familiar with what scales and what doesn't, what performs and what doesn't, what's secure and what isn't.

That's why Network Computing chose in its CSP infrastructure survey to examine the architectures of CSPs serving up e-commerce hosting to businesses of many sizes. We surveyed more than 40 CSPs--three predominantly serving large businesses, seven serving medium-sized organizations and the remainder serving small merchants. This mix reflects the realities of e-commerce--skills, staffing requirements and infrastructure investment all mandate that most small to midsized companies outsource services, while the need for high reliability and customization at large companies keeps the ranks of high-end CSPs to a minimum.

CSPs told us about their OSes, Web servers, firewalls, encryption and commerce-specific products--as well as their likes and dislikes concerning these infrastructure components.

Most important, they revealed that the biggest mistake they see merchants making today is assuming that e-commerce is a surefire route to quick, easy money. Every CSP that primarily serves medium- and large-sized merchants told us that the most unrealistic customer expectation they encounter is the notion of overnight success.

Even the smallest site demands an advance business plan, marketing and advertising to attract visitors. Sites need regular maintenance and fresh content to keep customers coming back. In the rush to get started, many of these basics are forgotten. Rather than generating overnight success, site building often more closely resembles the phased processes and gradual return on investment typical of brick-and-mortar stores. CSPs find, in fact, that retail businesses are much quicker to grasp the realities of e-commerce than manufacturers or other nonretail organizations.

The time it takes to establish a commerce offering can range from a few hours (for a tiny business seeking to plug a few items into a commodity-type server) to months or even years. Some CSPs estimate that the typical midsized business will need one to three months to launch online. A Fortune 500 site might dedicate more than a year to site-design alone. Business-to-business commerce sites--which are expected eventually to dwarf business-to-consumer offerings in terms of corporate savings and profits--aren't built overnight.