The history & evolution of E-commerce

The electronic commerce (E-commerce) refers to all forms of business activities conduct across internet. This includes intranet and extranet, online advertising, business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C) and etc. Its addresses the need of organizations and consumers to cut costs while improving the quality of services and increasing the speed of services delivery by using internet.

The E-commerce was come from development of the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). EDI is a set of standard developed in the 1960’s, which gave an opportunity for users to exchange information and do electronic transactions. In those days, there was a several format of EDI available, therefore companies still might not be able to interact with each other. In 1984s, ASC X 12 standards become stable and reliable in transferring large amount of transactions.

The next major step occurred in 1992s where the Mosaic web-browser becomes the first ‘point and click’ browser. The Mosaic browser was quickly adapted into a downloadable browser, and Netscape which allowed easier access to E-commerce. In 1998s, the development of Red Hat Linux was another step in E-commerce growth. Linux gave user another choice in a platform other then windows that was reliable and open source. In February 2000, there are hackers attacked some major players of e-commerce, including yahoo and Ebay, it gave a signal that it is a need for improved security.

Evolution of e-commerce can be attributed to a combination of regulatory reform and technological innovation. E-commerce of today took off with the arrival of world wide web (WWW) and browsers in early 1990s, and the online activities are more than one.
Today, businesses have been engaging in a form of E-commerce. There are no more realized on the paper documentation which consumes a great deal of time & higher printing cost. Using E-commerce, it can create a set of standards format for transmitting that information electronically, businesses were able to reduce error, prevent risk & eliminate the unused data. Using security to secure the company profile and only allow user to login with a password. DSL which has helped to expand the volume and capacity of communications that helped in the process of rapid growth. As a result, the internet and electronic data exchange are becoming valuable tools in the supply chain.