(FORTUNE Magazine) – The "e" in e-business will soon be irrelevant.

Here's why I know that statement is true. I'm a Silicon Valley venture capitalist moonlighting as a columnist for FORTUNE. In the past two years, we VCs have seen business plans that propose to create a revolution in every industry in the economy: from banking to selling groceries, from planning weddings to managing farms, from routing container ships to, yes, making steel. These proposals come from all kinds of people, from hopeful young business-school graduates (or dropouts) to experienced corporate managers. They all ask us to invest $5 million to $20 million in return for between 20% and 30% of their startup. They all plan to do the same thing: combine Internet technology and a massive amount of marketing money to compete with companies founded before the Web arrived. And whether their business plans say so or not, they're all operating on the premise that big old companies are too stupid, too slow-moving, and too blinded by their histories to compete effectively in the new economy. They all believe, in other words, that they can use the "e" in e-business to create value for customers--and wealth for investors--before your big old company gets its act together.

So here comes FORTUNE, with a package of stories that are mostly about big old companies that seem to be starting to get it. Now, let's say you work at a FORTUNE 500 company. You could read into this package that the editors are trying to make you feel good about your job. You might read it and think, "It's okay! My company is beginning to figure out the Internet. Our technical staff is integrating our online presence with our traditional channels. Our stock has recovered a bit, so our company's market cap is up to, oh, 50% of that of our tiny dot.com competitors. Our CEO is beginning to answer his e-mail personally. Heck, maybe the number of people in Silicon Valley participating in the digital revolution and making millions of dollars is really only a tiny minority. It's okay!"

It's not okay. The advent of the World Wide Web provided a classic window of opportunity for new companies to challenge the existing order. Just as your company is figuring out what puts the "e" in e-business, that window is closing. Just as big companies are learning how to respond to the Yahoos, eBays, and Amazons, the game is set to change. Just as you think you have a clue, you're going to have to figure out something totally new.

The first two stories that follow are about old-line companies trying to get it--and I do mean old: Sears, Whirlpool, Nordstrom, and Procter & Gamble. About six months ago, large companies started wooing venture capitalists as partners and investors in their Internet ventures. Now maybe Redpoint's financing of P&G's Reflect.com as described in "Can These Marriages Be Saved?" will be successful. I don't know. You'll notice that Reflect.com does not compete with P&G's main business; that may be a sign that P&G still hasn't figured out how to use the Net to serve its primary customers.

I've worked on a couple of these big-business-meets-venture-capital deals. Now I've stopped working on them and gone back to my real job of financing new companies, for one simple reason: Any company that wants to make it in the years ahead must make the technology and processes of the Internet part of its core competence and not spin that expertise into a different company. That leaves no real way for me to invest independent risk capital.

Then comes a report card, FORTUNE's take on ten big companies that "get it." I can't testify for all of them. I'd go so far as to say that I bet some of them don't get it, especially since the meaning of "getting it" is changing as we speak. But I do know that one is exemplary: Schwab. At a conference this past summer, Schwab president David Pottruck introduced the concept of "clicks and mortar," the idea that a company actually gains an advantage by being able to serve customers wherever they happen to be--in a store, on the phone, online, or offline in an e-mail program. The key to clicks and mortar is recognizing the value of the Internet and stepping up to the cost of adopting it as a channel. That means compensating your salespeople or resellers so that they support the Net; integrating it completely with your production and fulfillment systems; and giving customers a real choice on how to interact with your company.

You have to give the people at Schwab credit. They had created a separate e-business called e.Schwab, but about two years ago they realized it was the wrong thing to do because it made customers choose between Schwab and e.Schwab. So in a painful, expensive process, the company integrated e.Schwab. It had to reprice its core products, retrain all of its employees, and renovate all of its systems. The result? Schwab is unquestionably the best-positioned retail brokerage.

At the end of this package comes an interesting story about Amazon. It addresses the next e-trend that counts, one I'll call the Barksdale Effect. Jim Barksdale, the former CEO of Netscape, gets his jollies figuring how to make large, complex systems deliver value to customers. He managed operations at FedEx. He ran McCaw Cellular, which became AT&T Wireless Systems. And he ran Netscape. (Well, no one's perfect.) Now he's rich and living in Aspen, Colo., whence he aims to finance new companies that use technology to manage physical processes. He's betting that the next opportunity in the technological revolution will be in providing seamless, flawless fulfillment and distribution of products. He's invested in HomeGrocer.com, which is building a system to deliver groceries to your home; Tellme Networks, which is building a system to provide unique services via the telephone; and Respond.com, which is building a system to help Web users find all kinds of products and services.

I think Jim Barksdale is on to the next wave. As the slower big companies start to "get it," the playing field of applying Internet technology will become more level. So in this next e-wave, every company, big or small, new or old, will try to build physical systems that provide better service to customers. The Web has forever changed the way companies and customers (whether they be consumers or other businesses) buy and sell to each other, learn about each other, and communicate. The best companies will now build systems to pick and pack products that are shipped individually, keep track of those shipments, and make sure the stuff gets delivered to our houses or businesses. They'll integrate those systems with the manufacturing, distribution, and computer networks already in place. That's not spinning off a Website or offering some e-variation of a product. That's not so much e-anything as it is figuring out how to use technology to move stuff around efficiently. In the next wave, in other words, businesses will make "e" such a core part of their business that the difference between "e" and everything else will be nonexistent.

Or they won't be businesses any more.