"The internet has been the revolutionary technology of the new millennium, empowering consumers and businesses alike with blessings of connectivity" (Kotler & Armstrong 2004:72)
             With the rapid increase and development of technology, information systems are no longer a novelty. They have become an ordinary component of our everyday life, varying from private every day use (such as emailing friends, chatting on MSN, etc) to corporate use, by facilitating business processes and transactions. In the modern days, an office is practically inexistent without the use of some kind of information systems. The old office, where people used only pens, paper, calculators and envelopes is quickly ceasing to exist in that particular form. Today we are moving into an era of "intangible" business processes, where business communication and transactions can be conducted anywhere, anytime, and with a simple mouse click. E-Commerce is currently changing the way business is conducted with very few organizations debating whether or not to participate in it. This essay will focus on the rise and importance of e-commerce, in order to illustrate that electronic commerce is the 'behind' any successful modern business.
             The phenomenal growth of the Internet has lead to the emergence of a great number of new technologies. One of the most important ones is the ability to conduct business over the Internet. E-Commerce is often described as the buying and selling of information, products and services with the assistance of computer technology and the Internet (Rahman & Mahesh: 2000). This definition implies business to business transactions, as well as customer to customer transactions. Other variants such as customer to business and business to customer also apply, with the Internet as the main medium of communication. Traditional e-commerce was centred around electronic data interchange (EDI), a sharing and transferring of business information via value adde...