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A definition for e-commerce e A universally accepted definition does not exist Anything that uses electronic technology in order to do business can be intended as ebusiness We can look at e-commerce as to a subset of e-business concerning commerce Commerce is intended as the activity of exchanging goods and services with some kind of payment
The EU definition for e-commerce e e-commerce is based on the electronic processing and transmission of data. It encompasses many diverse activities including electronic trading of goods and services, on-line delivery of digital content, electronic fund transfer, electronic share trading, public procurement. (EU(97)/157)
Internet offered the general public the opportunity to conduct businesses online
Other categories:
Business to government (B2G) Mobile Commerce
B2C applications
Offer directly to the customer an interface of activity
Typical examples:
Online book store (e.g. amazon.com) Online car purchasing (e.g. automall.com) Booking and purchase of airline tickets (e.g. ryanair.com)
Correspond to retail sale Growth of B2C applications thanks to Internet A new kind of B2C applications are the Cybermalls
Disadvantages:
Low order conversion rates High risk (see Cyberphobia)
B2B applications
Realize transactions needed to perform financial or commercial activities by companies over the Internet Some typical applications:
E-procurement E-Marketplace
The turnover is much greater than that dealed with B2C applications
C2C applications
Concern the consumers who run negotations with other consumers sometimes utilizing as intermediary a company
Examples:
Ebay Autotrader.com
Disadvantages
Little earning capacity
B2G applications
Correspond to all kind of transactions between company and public administrator Utilized mostly in the USA
The development of such applications faces some of the greatest challenges in the security area to secure the trust of consumers
are common to many applications, but they are all critical in the case of e-commerce because of its nature
Security Issues
Security is a crucial feature
Most transactions take place in a fully automated way Restricted data are transmitted through a public network
Users must be sure that their money will not be lost or stolen
Flexibility Issues
E-commerce systems are subject to frequent structural changes because of mutations of:
Products and services provided by the firm Commercial partnerships
Scalability
Capability to support a certain number of users (thousands, even millions) without compromising performances It is important because a slow application often means to lose customers (especially in B2C) since they have very small patience
Fault tolerance
A less fault-tolerant application will be less available to the user Every minute that a site is not available costs 1400$ to the company (survey on 400 major companies by Oracle) It is easy to lose customers forever It is necessary to redirect the users without they perceive it
Integration
Always needed since no application offering every commercial functionality can be realized Critical because the commercial funcionalities are often realized by many different legacy and third-party applications
Examples:
ERP systems Legacy systems
User Interfaces
Must be intuitive,easily comprehensible and of simple utilization In the case of B2C must support profiling in order to anticipate the customer requests They also need to be customizable
MultiMulti-channel interfaces
Application interfaces must support several kinds of connections:
Web browsers Web TV Cellular phones (via WAP) PDA
Time-toTime-to-market
Has greater importance than elsewhere Emphasis on COTS and reuse
ThreeThree-tier architecture
Separates the business logic of the application from user interfaces and from data access Middle tier can be furtherly divided In this case we call it multi-tier architecture:
Easier to modify one component Lower cost to deploy and maintain
ThreeThree-tier architecture
Application server
Software that runs on the middle tier of a three-tier environment In multi-tier environments it is often a distributed and complex software Commercial implementations exist:
Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 Sun iPlanet IBM WebSphere Application Server
Legacy systems
Transactions
Security
Session
Horizontal Services
Database
Application Server
Client tier Server tier Data tier
Domain Model
References (1/4)
Introduction to e-commerce and the development of e-commerce applications:
Professional Java E-Commerce, M.Kerzner et al., Wrox Press, 2001
References (2/4)
Electronic Data Interchange:
Intodruction to EDI, vv.aa. ,DevEdge online
Application Servers:
Introduction to iPlanet Application Server Architecture, Robert Schulteis, Sun Microsystems, 2002 http://www.sun.com/developers/evangcentral
References (3/4)
Platforms for e-commerce:
Building Applications in the Net Economy, Netscape Communications Corporation White paper, 1997
References (4/4)
E-procurement and e-marketplaces:
E-procurement white paper, Digital Union 2001 (http://www.digitalunion.com)
The End
In a standard format (ANSI X12,EDIFACT) Established between 1968 and 1975 in the transportation industries (U.S.) Application-to-application communication without human intervention
in automated way
Measure the capability of a certain B2C application to convert an user into a buyer A survey carried out in August 2000 showed that order conversion rates in USA were of 1.9% (Boston Consulting Group and Shop.org)
E-procurement applications(3/3)
3. Order approvation compliant to company standards and procedures 2. Purchase request is performed by employees via a Web interface 4. Purchase order is electronically placed
7. Product receipt
E-marketplace
An environment that brings buyers and sellers together in a virtual space for ecommerce, enabling them to reach new customers and reduce transaction costs E-marketplaces are becoming more fashionable
Cybermalls
Include more virtual shops Appear as web portals with links to single e-shops grouped by different product categories (e.g. music or books) Advantages for smaller businesses:
Reduced initial investment Easily traceability through the malls brand
Presentation Layer
Its purpose is to provide a user interface to the end user of the application Controls the look-and-feel of the application and responds to user events Serves actually as the front-end of the application
Horizontal services
Services provided by the application server by means of an underlying technology (CORBA, EJB, COM,etc.) Typical services:
Transactions Security Session Management Resource pooling Load balancing and fail over
Session Management
Mantains the correlation among requests generated by the same user
Resource Pooling
Caching the instances of used resources (e.g. database connections) improves performances
2000 Jan-Apr 6
2001 220
2002 66
Source:Webmergers.com