e-Enterprise

Net commerce is any kind of commercial activity undertaken over the Internet.

This sector has developed at a fever pitch since the early days of electronic brochure hosting. The first two stages of Net commerce have generated an unprecedented range of new business models and applications, along with a substantial amount of publicity and hype.

1. E-commerce – The first stage of Net commerce involved the development of business-to-consumer services. Several E-commerce business models proliferated, each giving rise to attendant application models. E-tailing and consumer portals, for instance, necessitated online-catalog, shopping-cart, advertising, and personalization applications. Similarly, the consumer bidding and auctioning model relied upon public bid-board, account-management, and notification applications, and the electronic bill payment model fueled not only consumer payment processing but also analysis and reporting applications.
2. E-business – The second stage of Net commerce brought about business and application models geared to the needs of the business-to-business marketplace. For...