Overview

Like many other nations, the beginnings of e-commerce started with the financial sector.  Financial companies have a need to process and store a lot of data in a very repetitive way.  This lends itself to becoming the obvious first mover in a nation into e-commerce.  This fact is especially true in Brazil where inflation is a constant problem.  Banks needs to have very complex systems for measuring this inflation and analyzing how it effects the value of the Real.

Value Chain Alliance

Before the internet boom ended, Compaq, Microsoft, and Cisco entered the Brazilian market together to establish an e-commerce services company.  They were named the "Value Chain Alliance".  The idea behind the relationship is to use each of their strengths to offer complete services for Brazilian customers looking to do business on the internet.  The projections for their merger, in pace with the rest of the technology boom, were astronomical. I found no information on this alliance from past the year 2000. (39)

Sources

(39) "Microsoft, Cisco, Compaq in Brazil E-Commerce Alliance", Internet News,  http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/4_9482_Ext. March 11, 1999.

(40) "E-Commerce Readiness and Diffusion: The Case of Brazil", Federal University of Rio de Janeiro,  http://www.crito.uci.edu/publications/pdf/gec/brazil.pdf. 

Table: "Use of E-Commerce Technologies 2002" (40)