ECommerce and EBusiness

Why study Technologies for ECommerce and EBusiness?

• ECommerce applications and services are the primary Information System  Technologies (software) for business-to-business (inter-business) transactions
• Designed to support an enterprise's external supply chain through a network of suppliers and intermediaries
• Should also support the demand chain network as well
  
• Designed to operate across wide-area networks (WAN or extranet)
• EBusiness applications and services are the primary IST for business-to-employee (intra-business) transactions
• Designed to support an enterprise's internal value chain network
• Designed to operate across local-area networks (LAN) or virtual private network (intranet)
  
• The design (architectural configuration), information (content) and operation (performance) of EC/EB applications and services realize:
• business strategy
• IT strategy
• alignment of business-IT strategy
• hence, competitive position (advantage or disadvantage?)
• Note: applications are multi-purpose, while services are single-purpose (application)
  

What technologies are of interest? 

• Wide-area networks (Internet -- a network of networks) 
• World Wide Web (second most pervasive application infrastructure running on the Internet)
• Web services 
• Web-based applications built using XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI)
• Web-based communication systems (Email, Instant Messaging, Web sites), textual, graphic, or multi-media
• Global File/Resource-Sharing Systems (e.g., Kazaa)
  
• Portals (Enterprise-specific Webs, running content management systems, e.g., Catalyst.gsm.uci.edu)
• Local-area networks (wired, wireless, ubiquitous Virtual Private Networks (VPNs))
• MIS applications integrated with EC/EB:
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Sales and Marketing
• Operations and Manufacturing
• Research and Development
• Human Relations and Public Relations
• Office Productivity 
• more...
• Open source software for EC/EB (OpenOffice.org, GNUenterprise.org, etc.)
• Networked computer game environments (Unreal Tournament, Quake Arena, Everquest, Asheron's Call, The Sims Online, Gamespy, etc.)
  

Technological Architectures 

• Information System: hardware, software applications, and network (connectivity, topology)
• Information content (information architecture): 
• what's on the Web site
• how it's organized (internal representation) 
• how it's organized for access, presentation, layout and navigation (external representation)
• Business processes: the alignment of IS, information architecture, workers (people) and workflow
• EC/EB Grids: Network of IS, IA, and Business Processes
  

ECommerce categories 

• B2B -- business-to-business (ECommerce)
• B2E -- business-to-employee (EBusiness)
• B2C -- business-to-consumer (ECommerce external, EBusiness internal)
• C2C -- consumer-to-consumer (ECommerce, e.g., via EBay)
  

Topic sequence:

• EC/EB Infrastructure
• World Wide Web and Web Information Systems
• The business of EC and EB
• Consumer-focused EC
• EBusiness and Corporate Intranets
• B2B ECommerce and EC Grids
• Cybercrime
• Security and Privacy
• Future (Applications) of EC and EB

Note: Keywords and References in Davis and Basamati book