n 2000, Amazon decided to overhaul its entire system. The company spent $200
million on new applications, including analysis software from E.piphany, logistics from
Manugistics, and a new DBMS from Oracle. The company also signed deals with SAS for
data mining and analysis [Collett 2002]. But, one of its biggest deals was with Excelon for
business-to-business integration systems. The system enables suppliers to communicate in
real time, even if they do not have sophisticated IT departments. It provides a direct con-nection to Amazon’s ERP system either through programming connections or through a
Web browser [Konicki 2000].