E-Commerce vs the Traditional Business Mechanism

E-Commerce vs the Traditional Business Mechanism

History of Internet

History of the Internet

1969 :          The US Department of Defense started the first network amongmajor research centres in the                         US.

1971 :          Major connections or nodes were established. E-mail was introduced.

1973 :          Defense Department started developing various forms of file transfer.

1984 :          Domain Name Service (DNS) was introduced.

1986 :         The US National Service Foundation created Internet-based telephone lines.

1987 :         The number of hosts (computers on the Internet) reached 10,000.

1988 :         The number of hosts on the Internet crossed over 60,000.

1989 :         Over 100,000 hosts on the Internet were registered.

1991 :          The World Wide Web (WWW) was created by CERN inSwitzerland.
                   (Conseil European pour la Recherché Nuclearire)

1992 :          One million hosts were found on the Internet.

1995 :          There were a total of 6.6 million hosts or computers on the Internet.

July 1997 :   1.3 million domain names were registered.

Dec. 1997 :  22 million servers, 40 million users on the WWW.

2000 :          110 million users and 72 million domain names.

2003 :          802.2 million users and 233 hosts.

Origin of E-Commerce

Origin of E-Commerce
E-commerce refers to conducting business online with the help of electronic
devices like personal computers, phone lines, fax machines, pagers and so on.
In the 1950s, computers were used by organizations to process and store records
of internal transactions. However, information between businesses continued
to be exchanged on paper, like purchase orders, invoices, cheques, remittance
devices and other standard forms, which were used to document transactions.
IBM was the first company which used the term ‘e-commerce’
internationally. In 1972, IBM used the term as ‘e-commerce’ and the first
successful transaction was executed between the US and the European Union
in 1993, with the invention of personal computers.
By the 1960s, businesses that engaged in large volumes of transactions
had begun exchanging transaction information on punched cards or magnetic
tapes. Data communications technology eventually allowed trading partners to
transfer data over telephone lines, instead of shipping punched cards or magnetic
tapes to each other in advance.
Although these information transfer agreements between trading partners
increased efficiency and reduced errors, they were still not an ideal solution.Only large trading partners could afford to participate in the benefits of these
paper-free exchanges, because the translation programmes that one trading
partner wrote generally would not work for other trading partners.
Several freight and shipping companies, in 1968, joined hands to form
the Transportation Data Coordinating Committee (TDCC), which was charged
with exploring paths to minimize the load that shippers and carriers faced. The
shipper could electronically transmit the computer file to any freight company
that had adopted the TDCC format. Therefore, they were saved from the printing
and handling of forms, and also from entering the data twice and having to
worry about error-correction procedures.
During the 1970s, the introduction of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
between banks over a secured private network changed the financial market.
In 1973, the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) committee developed
a uniform EDI standard. This committee and its subcommittees included experts
from the information technology background from over 800 organizations. During
the late 1970s and early 1980s, e-commerce became widespread within
companies in the form of electronic messaging technologies, i.e., EDI and email.
Combining a range of processes, such as EDI, electronic mail (e-mail),
WWW and Internet applications, e-commerce provides ways to exchange
information between individuals, companies and customers and most important
of them all, between computers. The core media of e-commerce remains the
Internet and the WWW.
E-commerce is the paperless exchange of information in a business with
the use of EDI, electronic bulletin board, e-mail and other technologies. E commerce
helps to automate processes and transactions that are manually
done on paper. It assists companies to change the way they operate and become
completely e-environment friendly.

Definition of E-commerce

Definition of E-Commerce

E-commerce is an advanced technology related to commerce and the electronic

media, the computer in particular. It is first important to understand the term

‘business’, which refers to the exchange of goods, items or commodities and

services or applications for money.

A popular definition of business is as follows:

Business is the exchange or the buying and selling of entities (goods or

commodities) on a very large scale involving transportation from one place to

another.

In e-commerce, there is a need for computers and Internet applications

to manage and organize products and services. This concept of using the Internet

to connect with customers, business partners and distributors for business

purposes—as in the case of e-mail—is known as e-commerce or electronic

business.

The terms ‘e-commerce’ and ‘e-business’ are often used interchangeably.

E-commerce deals with the buying and selling of information, products

and services through the computer network.

E-commerce is defined as a business activity which uses an electronic

medium. It also refers to the buying or selling of goods and services without

visiting a store.

E-commerce involves activities, such as the delivery of information,

products, services and payment through the electronic medium.