The Study of e-Marketplace - A Case Study of Formosa Technologies e-Marketplace

Enterprises often need to communicate and exchange data among each other. Previously, such communication was mainly achieved by human contact, letter exchange, by telephone and by fax. In the early stage of the Internet and electronic procurement (e-Procurement), enterprises built the channel for exchanging data by using EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). However, in the later stage of the development of the Internet, which is known as the globalized electronic marketplace (e-Marketplace) stage, the standard of data interchange has become the major factor for suppliers to succeed in e-Marketplace. Furthermore, when developing information systems on the Internet, the data integration problem should be considered seriously. It was especially challenging on the Business-to-Business (B2B) data interchange issue. In many standards of data interchange, ebXML, which is designed for interchanging data amongst electronic enterprises, is the most widely approved and accepted. ebXML defines many specifications for B2B electronic data interchange. This paper uses Formosa Technologies e-Marketplace as an example of e-Marketplace, starting from globalized e-Marketplace to discuss the role of ebXML in the e-Marketplace. Finally, the suggestion for improvement to the architecture of Formosa Technologies e-Marketplace is provided.