IBM Corp will announce next quarter its internet-intranet-based data mining facilities management service, provisionally called Net.mine. The idea is that those who cannot afford or do not need complete data warehousing systems would use IBM’s hardware to churn out meaningful information from their morass of data by sending the data to and fro over the internet. However, Ben Barnes, IBM’s general manager of worldwide decision support systems said that realistically, large amounts of data would be sent on magnetic media not the internet, but for the small and occasional data warehouser, some sort of network would be viable, either the IBM Global Network, an intranet, or even the internet. As you can probably guess, the precise implication s of moving such data over the internet are still being worked out, as is what software will be available with which to mine the data. Companies such as DataMind Corp have said the internet is unsuitable for moving the data, but would be useful for visualizing the data in some sort of meaningful way (CI No 2,996). And this is what IBM sounds like it has got in mind when Barnes said that conceivably a little bitty entrepreneur could set up a storefront on the internet and do data mining. Barnes said the service would be up and running either next quarter or in the first quarter of next year.