E-Business Technologies

First Decade of Internet Technology Innovations for E-Business

The implementation of secure ways to transmit sensitive transactions and a standard for
credit card processing were catalysts for the development of Web sites with direct sales
capabilities. Similarly, the implementation of a digital signature capability was a catalyst for
enabling secure business-to-business (B2B) transactions via the Internet by the year 2000.
Many businesses also have portals designed for their employees to provide Web access
to the companys intranet, which might include self-service applications to facilitate the
collection of employee data for payroll and other HR systems. Some businesses have also
established portals for business partners, which are accessed remotely using a URL separate from
the companys public Web site, to provide selective access to company information (called
extranets).
By the beginning of this century, Web masters had gained experience designing and
operating Web sites for public use.

Legal and Regulatory Environment

Tax Policies
Copyright Laws
Antitrust Laws

 Privacy Issues

STRATEGIC E-BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES (AND THREATS)

A well-established, pre-Internet framework for assessing a firms strategic opportunities
and threats is Michael E. Porters competitive forces model.
Porter used this competitive forces model to make predictions about the commercial
opportunities and threats to an industry from the perspective of a traditional brick-and-mortar
company. Only three major e-business opportunities for traditional companies were identified:
1. the procurement of supplies via the Internet can increase a companys power over its
suppliers,
2. the size of a potential market can be greatly expanded (due to the national and global
reach of the Internet), and
3. distribution channels between the traditional company and its customers can be
eliminated.
However, in the same article Porter also identified a large number of e-business threats to
the traditional company, including the following:
1. there is greater competition based on price because the Internet makes it more
difficult to keep product or service offerings proprietary,
2. the widening of the geographic markets results in an increase in the number of
competitors,
3. the Internet reduces or eliminates some traditional barriers, such as the need for an inperson sales force, and
4. customers have more bargaining power because they can see prices for the same or
similar products by just looking at Web sites and can easily switch to a competitor.

B2B APPLICATIONS
B2B applications that leverage the Internet are not visible to the public in the same way
that Web sites for B2C applications are. Prior to the Internet, many large companies had in
proprietary EDI systems for electronic transmission of standard documents that used private
networks.