8.10.1 Agents and the business performance they deliver will be involved in up to $327 billion worth of Net-based commerce in five years, according to Forrester Research. (Ma, 1999, pg. 79) Not surprisingly, an agent development industry has sprung to supply agents and associated technology to online brokerages, auction houses, catalogues, and others. The agents automatically buy and sell merchandise, negotiate contracts, and interact with remote human customers.

8.10.2 Amazon.com may be the best current example of a successful use of agent technology for e-commerce. The company aggregated book catalogues, delivering on the first day of operation in 1995 instant access to more than a million titles. Few physical bookstores can stock more than 100,000 titles. Online brokerages such as E-trade and eSchwab, have found ways to give full-service securities trading at 10% of the traditional $200 commission.

8.10.3 Pattie Maes of MIT, who founded and directs the Software Agent group, is one of the leading figures in developing agents for e-commerce. Her group is responsible for producing one the first such agents, Firefly, which was bought by Microsoft. She, along with Robert Guttman and Alexandre Moukas from a MIT spin-off company, Frictionless Commerce Inc., identify the following as fundamental stages of the buying process: Need identification; Product brokering; Merchant brokering; Negotiation; Purchase and delivery; and product service evaluation. Agents are the mediators in e-commerce. (Maes, et. al.,1999, pg. 83) [8]

8.10.3 As agent technology matures and agent applications become more common, developers will want to integrate multiple applications so that different systems collaborate synergistically. Agents will be able to use their knowledge to dynamically negotiate software interfaces, enabling them to self-organise, forming super-applications at run-time. Super-applications will embody a new generation of scaleable, cost-effective technology. [top] Notes:

8. At present, Persona Logic; Firefly; Bargain; Jango; Kasbah; Auction Bot and T@T are the most widely used agents for e-commerce purposes. [back]