BUSINESS QUADRANT.

• Position: Electronic commerce

WITH NONE OF THE HYPE, online transactions between businesses is the silent "killer app" of electronic commerce. The worldwide flow of dollars in this quiet channel is expected to be five times as large as consumer spending over the Internet. Companies in the region are not lagging. "Latin America figured out that business-to-business electronic commerce is going to be much more dominant compared to business-to-consumer [commerce]," says Tony Rummans, IBM's regional vice president. In many cases, large companies are converting rigid old billing and logistics systems to the Internet. Recently privatized companies are fueling what some term a wholesale change in information culture. Two years ago, pushing web services would have been fruitless," says...