The history of e-business goes back to 1998, when numerous business web sites appeared all over the virtual world. Back then, the customers and other interested parties could visit these simple portals and view the product's specifications and ordering information. This phase of e-business evolution introduced the first basic procurement capabilities, which were not very effective.

The next phase expanded the Web-based technologies, by including order management, procurement, logistics, financial management and supply chain planning. The third phase in the evolution of e-business made it possible for marketplaces to interact. Nowadays, the consultants and analysts are predicting that at some point trading exchanges will replicate enterprise resource planning capabilities in virtual space.

There are six types of online exchanges operating today, from one-to-many to true many-to-many. Perhaps you are wondering what this is all about. Well, a One-to-Many Marketplace is a private exchange, linking one seller to more than one buyer. The seller is the one to make the rules on the market, forcing the participants to do business the way he wants. The seller is typically the owner of the marketplace.

The second type of online exchange I will speak about is the Broker Hub. It is meant match multiple buyers and multiple sellers together based on product pricing. Broker hubs are best suited for commodities, typically sold in bulk, and for limited-supply products that are purchased through auctions or some type of bidding process. There are two ways of handling the requests for quotes and proposals, contracts and other transactions between buyers and sellers. They can be handled through e-mail versus automated bidding processes, even if real-time dynamic transactions are becoming more and more frequently used.

The Aggregator Hubs display to potential buyers the content of catalogs from different suppliers. Some of these hubs may also display other content, such as contracts and authorizations.

The software tools and virtual environments for multiple buyers and sellers to share information can be found on the Collaboration Hubs. In many ways similar to these hubs, the Translator Hubs provide buying, selling, and collaboration capabilities.

Last, but not least, the last type of online exchange involves the Many-To-Many Marketplaces. They are virtual software environments that allow multiple purchasing systems to interact directly with multiple ordering systems. The result is unrestricted and dynamic e-commerce between sellers and buyers.

Very huge marketplaces are just beginning to appear, because of the many standards that are