From...

by Jackie Cohen

(IDG) -- There's a reason why some of the country's most straitlaced employers have dived headfirst into Web site construction and consulting: because that's where the money is. Demand for Web strategy and development services continues to grow at a breakneck pace: Forrester Research pegs the market at $10 billion.

Some call the companies attacking this market "I-Builders." It's a catchall category that includes online design firms, ad agencies, systems integrators and management consultants. The field is wide open, and the companies involved are a competitive bunch. Many I-Builders try to be all things to all people rather than tout one strength. Management consultants boast of Web-design prowess, while interactive agencies claim to be strong in e-commerce consulting and programming.

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• Agency.com: Agency.com was just two guys and a Mac when Chan Suh and Kyle Shannon formed the company in February 1995. Now it's an interactive powerhouse that has entered new markets through acquisitions. Recently it purchased Twinspark Interactive People in Amsterdam, furthering its European push.

• Andersen Consulting: It isn't a company known for its modesty. After a recent IDC report ranked Andersen Consulting the No. 1 Internet services firm, ahead of rivals PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, KPMG and EDS, the mammoth firm promptly spread the word through a wide-scale print ad campaign.

• Cambridge Technology Partners: Cambridge Technology Partners isn't the first name you think of in the I-Builders category. That's because you hardly see much of these people. Most CTP employees stay hidden away in someone's back office, monkeying around with the mainframe. The company has earned a solid reputation as the one to turn to when electronically tying complex sites to existing business systems.

• Ernst & Young: Ernst & Young's web gimmick is Ernie, a self-service electronic consultant that tries to pass itself off as a bot. Subscribers can ask Ernie questions, and if the answer isn't already in a FAQ, it gets routed to a live person who replies within 24 hours.

• iXL: Bert Ellis, the CEO of iXL, made his fortune in broadcasting, owning 13 television stations throughout the South. In 1996 he had an epiphany: The TV business was highly fragmented and tapped out, but he saw big upside potential in his company's online department. So he held on to his six-person Internet staff and ditched the stations.

• Modem Media.Poppe Tyson: Modem media dates back to the Stone Age in I-Builder time. Formed in 1987 by two former executives of CUC International, the company originally aimed its radar at interactive television; it switched gears in the early 1990s when the Internet began to percolate.

• Organic Online: Unlike many of its rivals, Organic Online has yet to make an acquisition. This hasn't hurt the company so far: It ranks as one of the largest Internet media buyers and counts $200 million in ad budgets under management.

• Pricewaterhouse-Coopers: PricewaterhouseCoopers is what you might expect: big and conservative. With an army of 150,000 employees around the globe and only 3,400 of them allocated to Internet projects, the Web division seems insignificant compared to the rest of the company. Still, the firm drew in about $450 million in Web-related projects over the last year.

• Razorfish: One of the highest-profile firms in New York City's Silicon Alley, Razorfish has quadrupled in size in the past year through acquisitions – engulfing i-Cube, Viewer, Tonga and Electrokinetics in its latest purchasing frenzy.

• USWeb/CKS : Was it bad for business when USWeb CEO Joe Firmage resigned amid media reports of his interest in UFOs? Not necessarily. USWeb/CKS is still the King Kong of Web building. During the past year, the company has grown 80 percent to 4,000 employees, with the megamerger of CKS and USWeb helping to jack up the numbers.