IDC (International Data Corporation) is predicting strong growth for Internet communities in the Benelux. According to a recent survey conducted by IDC on behalf of Teamware Group this especially applies for companies in education, government and financial services sectors.

The survey indicates that the use of Internet communities in the Benelux is still very limited, but it also shows that companies are interested in the concept. According to the survey, companies give priority to five criteria that an Internet community has to meet. It has to provide e-mail services, security and access control, e-mail notification, access to documents and integration with other applications.

In view of the fact that a company cannot apply Internet communities without an Internet connection, the number of companies that already have access to the Internet was examined first. As expected, this number is fairly high, with 2/3 of employees in Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg companies having access to the Internet.

Approximately the same number of companies also have a web site available, but only 9% of these offer their customers with any interactive services through the web. However, the prospects for the future are promising: more than 15% of the companies questioned are interested in applying interactive web services in the near future.

When it comes to companies with intranets, the figures are somewhat higher. 20% of the CEOs and General Managers interviewed use intranet communities and 33% of the remaining group have plans to do so. The use of extranet communities in the Netherlands and Belgium is restricted mainly to companies with 250 to 500 employees, but the number of these is still very limited.

For the survey IDC interviewed 358 Internet decision makers in the Benelux countries. The aim of the survey was to gain an insight into the interest in and use of Internet communities within companies and institutions in the Benelux.

Internet communities are user groups on the Internet that are able to communicate with one another in a more straightforward and effective manner. The Teamware group's Internet community solution is Teamware Pl@za, a set of ready-made Internet services integrated into a Java based platform and used for building interactive web sites.