Seventy per cent of all companies plan to have adopted the Internet over the next two years to link their supply chain operations, according to a global survey by Deloitte and Touche, the accounting, consultancy and tax firm.

The survey of chief information officers (CIOs) collated the responses of more than 1,000 CIOs from 25 countries and concluded most IT managers envisage an "explosion in active customer transactions" online.

According to Mr David Hearn, IT consulting partner with Deloitte and Touche: "Even discounting for the normal human capacity for optimism and exaggeration, the results demonstrate a huge perceptual shift in the way senior managers think about the Internet."

While Internet security emerged as a significant concern for CIOs, the overriding impression is that the urgency of adoption outweighs the risks. There will be a shift in company Websites offering simple promotional information to transaction-based activity.