E-Commerce: The Door to Opportunity, Wealth, and Exploration .
"Call it the first great business showdown of the 21st century. The giants of American Communications are locked in a struggle to build and control a vast web of electronic networks. These so-called information highways will be of glass fiber and will deliver an abundance of services to offices and houses - video images, phone calls, helpful data in many guises. They promise to change the way people work and play." -- Andrew Kupfer, Fortune.
While there is no one correct definition of e-business, it is generally described as a method of buying and selling product and services electronically. The main methods of e-business (also referred as e-commerce) remain the Internet and the World Wide Web, but the use of e-mail, fax, and telephone orders are also prevalent. E-business also encompasses all ranges of transactions: business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and consumer-to-business. In other words E-commerce is nothing more than the exchange of business information between two or more organizations. Another way to approach an understanding of E-business is to realize that its goal is to integrate people, businesses, government agencies, and contractors into a single community with the ability to communicate with one another across and computer platform.
Commerce on the Internet, which was almost nonexistent in 1996, is now an industry with a net worth of over two hundred billion dollars. No matter where we turn these days, we are confronted with another amazing statistic, another success story, another anecdote of how the Internet is going to change the way we work, play, communicate, and shop. It is the world's fastest growing industry and by the looks of it, no one will be able to stop this ever-growing phenomenon. .
With the exciting growth of the Internet, many companies are finding new and exciting ways to expand upon their business opportunities.