Web sites are the new front in the battle for customers and revenues. We've come a long way since the late 1990s, when companies scrambled just to get their online presence established, creating what was little more than an electronic brochure. Once online, many companies quickly saw the benefits and began reassessing their business plans with an eye toward giving their Web sites a greater role. E-commerce blossomed in this environment. Today, sophisticated Web capabilities-such as streaming videos, RSS feeds, and social networking applications-are providing even more opportunities to interact with site visitors and bring more business processes to the Web.

Progressive companies are rapidly adopting a Web-centric business model that is content-driven, collaborative, and interactive. They view their sites as multifeatured, interactive business applications that can attract viewers and retain customers through the use of site differentiation and personalization of content to fulfill their customers' needs. This transformation has taken many Web sites from a position of little or no strategic importance to full-blown business applications that in many cases are an organization's primary means of achieving their strategic and operational goals.