Business-to-business (B2B) online marketplaces are popping up more regularly than the average weed in a rain-soaked Irish garden but will they achieve the success that has been promised?

Heralded as the next major phase of Web development for business, much PR has failed to cloud the less than enthusiastic response from many business executives to business marketplaces or exchanges on the Internet.

Recent surveys indicate that many chief executives are far from overawed at the prospect of such marketplaces.

E-commerce executives gathered at last month's Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals summit in the US were of the opinion that business-to-business virtual marketplaces would vanish within two years through failure and consolidations.

The summit cited problems such as government antitrust investigations into online exchanges and talent poaching among business e-commerce companies and their clients.

The pace of announcements of the imminent establishment of such marketplaces has flowed thick and fast since the genre came into vogue following the failure of many business-to-consumer ventures to live up to expectations. But solid evidence of large-scale trading on the Internet is thin on the ground.

Scepticism about their success is well founded, as around 80 per cent of all virtual marketplaces announced worldwide in the last year are not yet operational.

On the other hand, Jupiter Communications recently produced a report predicting that online trade would rise to $6 trillion (€6.3 trillion) in the US by 2005.

The study found that Internet business-to-business trade would grow 20-fold over the next five years.

Mr Greg Lawless, chief executive of Crossbrowse.com, said the transition to online marketplaces was going to be slower than people expected and there would be no overnight successes. Crossbrowse is setting up an online marketplace for the catering industry in Ireland called cateringbuyer.com.

Mr Lawless said a lack of understanding of the Internet in boardrooms meant it would take time for people to switch, but he said that the change would happen slowly but surely.

Mr Lawless believes the Internet will not replace the traditional role of sales representatives for suppliers but that the rep will become more of a business developer than a salesman.

However, he believes the savings generated for those involved in the catering industry through cateringbuyer.com will be substantial because of the time saved by ordering online and the directness of communication from the buyer into the supply chain of the supplier.

He said the average hotelier or restaurant manager would make 80 per cent of the same orders each month so, rather than refilling order forms, they will be able to just click and re-order instantly via the Internet.

Online ordering could also eliminate mistakes in the ordering process over the telephone or in the mislaying of orders as the buyer will enter his order directly.

Although no B2B marketplaces have taken the initial public offering route in the Republic yet, those which have done so in the US have seen their stock take a battering along with other technology stocks in recent times.

The closest Irish example is that of worldoffruit.com. Shares in its parent, Fyffes, soared to historic highs following the announcement of its arrival. Since then, disillusionment with the model has contributed to the substantial decline in the price of Fyffes shares.

Like business-to-consumer transactions on the Internet, these marketplaces will have to face the problem of persuading individuals or organisations to buy over the Internet without physically seeing the product they are buying, or meeting any representative of their supplier.

Mr Dermot Berkerey, a partner in Delta Partners a Dublin-based venture capital company said he firmly believed that business procurement would move on to the Internet but he said it was not going to happen overnight; it was going to take time.

He said whether supplier driven, procurer driven or independent marketplaces would succeed in any given sector would depend on the structure of the industry.

For example, in the metals sector in Europe, there was a concentration of suppliers which dominate and would therefore dominate any marketplace set up online or elsewhere.

In more fragmented industrial sectors, with a plethora of both buyers and suppliers, independent marketplaces were likely to be successful.

As with any sector of business, a large number of online marketplaces will fail and Mr Berkerey believes many will either be swallowed up in a move to consolidation or simply run out of money and fade away.

He said those adopting the model early were going ahead but the business mainstream was still wondering what to do. It would eventually follow, perhaps within two years.

While few will admit that the success of online marketplaces will produce losers, their development may signal the death knell of the travelling sales representative.

Businesses whose sales are based mainly on relationships, such as certain financial services, insurance and pensions, will be under threat as middlemen are cut out.

The delay between the announcement of nascent marketplaces or exchanges and their actual operation may simply be a case of some companies putting the carriage before the horse.

Mr Berkerey said the technology or software to support such exchanges was very complex and a lot of time-consuming work was going into building the platforms to enable efficient trading.

Apart altogether from the success or failure of specific marketplaces, the issue of penetration or access to the Internet will prove a major barrier to the development of e-commerce and online marketplaces here.

Mr Ian Hyland, chief executive officer of iCommerce.ie, said companies needed to be educated about the benefits that online marketplaces offered. He said that, unless business Internet usage went up in the Republic, it could pose problems for the development of e-commerce here.

Mr Hyland believes marketplaces which achieve success will derive revenue from a number of sources not just transactions and subscriptions.

He said he saw no reason why such sites would not offer a range of services to clients.

He said companies like iCommerce had to show customers that they were not just offering them the Internet but, more critically, a business solution via the Internet.

Mr Hyland said the market was sceptical about the benefits of such marketplaces but he said he was confident the education and technological enablement of Irish businesses would change this.

B2B may be one of the catchphrases which continues to clog all discourse about business and the Internet but the jury is still out on how many marketplaces will succeed and how many simple will fade away.