Technological Issues and Challenges Facing e-Commerce and Virtual Enterprises

e-Commerce is a phenomenon that is arousing avid interest in industrialised countries and, more recently, in the developing world. Is this a passing fancy or just another distribution channel which companies are free to get involved in or not? Or, on the contrary, is it a must if one is to stay in business and prosper? This paper looks at some of the technological issues and challenges related to e-commerce and the emergence of virtual enterprises. e-Commerce: The New Way of Doing Business e-Commerce is the use of electronic means to exchange information and to carry out activities and transactions. From this definition, proposed by a number of national and international organisations and accepted by the vast majority of businesses (OECD, 1999), we can see that e-commerce covers many and varied areas of economic activity.