Revisiting the role of Internet‐EDI in the current electronic commerce scene

The electronic commerce (EC) marketplace is evolving so rapidly that the role of EDI, the technology that originally kickstarted the EC phenomenon to begin with, needs to be clarified under current conditions. Explores the way the Internet is expected to spur much higher EDI diffusion rates at much lower costs across industries. Value added networks (VANs) that firms primarily relied upon for traditional EDI connections have also redesigned their software product and service offerings to align with Internet‐enabled possibilities. On a much larger scale, the electronic marketplace is itself being reorganized as Internet‐EDI (I‐EDI) facilitates the formation of intranets, extranets, and now, “supranets”.