Houston, we have a problem: downtime on the Web

Lately it seems that every consultant with access to email is nagging us to get our businesses ready for the Internet.

But given the recent spate of viruses and hacking incidents - from Microsoft's Hotmail to the Scottish government's unintended new Web page - perhaps the business community should be asking if the Internet is ready for business.

The Internet is built on a quicksand foundation of hackers and techno geeks looking to shred any cybersuit they see. Hacking is a fact of life in ecommerce; viruses are as common as a cold. Building a secure and conservative business community on top of this is an uphill battle, at best.

For now, the old brands prevail online, often despite shoddy service and questionable uptime. Companies quick enough into uncharted cyberspace can clean up by building a brand that seems strong despite relative youth. Ebay is a good example. The company has publicised problems with systems crashes and interrupted auctions, but it is still considered a grand old dame of ecommerce.

It is plainly irresponsible to offer, for example, email with no guarantee of privacy or online trading services that can't guarantee a time-sensitive transaction will go through. Yet somehow Internet companies seem immune to the criticism. After the Hotmail incident, a Microsoft spokeswoman excused the flaw, explaining that nine out of ten times the email is secure. Assuming that figure is true, that's a ten per cent failure rate - and it's far too high. Yet this "nine out of ten is good enough" attitude is pervasive in cyberspace.

The Internet audience is tolerant of downtime now, and a systems failure is considered a good excuse by consumers. But time is running out fast on technical-glitch forgiveness.

Within the next two years, everyone on the Web will expect the near-flawless performance and uptime that telecoms has achieved. And we'd all better be ready.