A Brief History of E-commerce
In year 2012, no one is a stranger to the concept of ecommerce. It has become a part of our normal life. But it was not so mundane and ubiquitous like papers and running waters even 10-15 years ago. I just want to go through a brief history of e-commerce and its rising into the current state.
E-commerce is about using data for commercial purposes by transmitting the data electronically between computer systems in a standard format. But what are the key drivers that triggered the major growth that we saw in E-commerce systems and applications within the last two decades? Well over the past 30 years computer hardware has become cheaper by the month. Operating Systems and. particularly, the software that runs on them, have become more powerful and (arguably) more user-friendly, providing a wider range of solutions to the business market. At the same time, communication options have diversified and improved.
As a result, various industry sectors began to see the potential of linking their computer systems either directly or via communications networks. Once such links were in place, then it was a natural progression to begin exchanging information between trading partners. The requirement for some sort of structure and standardization to these exchanges of business information was recognised, hence the development of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).
We then saw the development and tremendous growth of the Internet as a business tool, with few companies not able to identify specific business benefits that it could deliver. The sorts of questions that organizations were being asked in relation to how they might benefit from the use of the Internet included:
We will look at some elements in the growth of E-commerce in more detail in subsequent posts.
In year 2012, no one is a stranger to the concept of ecommerce. It has become a part of our normal life. But it was not so mundane and ubiquitous like papers and running waters even 10-15 years ago. I just want to go through a brief history of e-commerce and its rising into the current state.
E-commerce is about using data for commercial purposes by transmitting the data electronically between computer systems in a standard format. But what are the key drivers that triggered the major growth that we saw in E-commerce systems and applications within the last two decades? Well over the past 30 years computer hardware has become cheaper by the month. Operating Systems and. particularly, the software that runs on them, have become more powerful and (arguably) more user-friendly, providing a wider range of solutions to the business market. At the same time, communication options have diversified and improved.
As a result, various industry sectors began to see the potential of linking their computer systems either directly or via communications networks. Once such links were in place, then it was a natural progression to begin exchanging information between trading partners. The requirement for some sort of structure and standardization to these exchanges of business information was recognised, hence the development of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).
We then saw the development and tremendous growth of the Internet as a business tool, with few companies not able to identify specific business benefits that it could deliver. The sorts of questions that organizations were being asked in relation to how they might benefit from the use of the Internet included:
- Do you have business partners and trading partners overseas?
- Do you make use of faxes and international phone calls?
- Do you need to find market information regularly?
- Do you travel regularly to business meetings by plane or train?
- Do you need to keep in touch with company news?
We will look at some elements in the growth of E-commerce in more detail in subsequent posts.
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