Electronic commerce and open communities: an assessment of internet EDI

Internet-based e-commerce evokes the perspective of dramatic cost reductions, faster transaction processing, and global markets. Until recently, e-commerce was generally confined to business-to-business transactions within strictly closed EDI communities with highly integrated trading systems. It is opinion of many observers that the advent of the internet can offer the opportunity to revitalise traditional EDI, based on the assumption that new Internet-EDI applications might allow the transition from closed to open networks. This should extend the application of e-commerce to broader business communities. The paper makes an assessment of Internet-EDI based on its technical features and documented experience, and evaluates its potential in comparison to traditional EDI. Differently from the common opinion, this analysis leads us to conclude that the use of the internet for EDI does not (necessarily) result in open trading communities, because these depend on the particular inter-organisational and trading agreements between partners.