Remember EDI: Experts Advise Caution with XML and E-commerce.

Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce and XML may seem all the rage, but they currently only touch 4 percent of operations. A recent study by GE Global Exchange Services estimates that there are 120 billion transactions per year that take place between companies worldwide, but this "mostly consists of fax or phone transactions," said Otto Kumbar, vice president of B2B services at GE Global Exchange, at the recent Electronic Commerce World conference in Orlando, Fla. Only about 5 billion of these transactions have been truly automated, he estimates.

Kumbar and other e-c