Internet service Providers

• What is an internet service?

traditional business service provided by and
enhanced by internet is called an internet service
. For example doctor advising a patient online or
a student using an online tutorial is an internet
service

Traditional service- Internet- service

delivery(value added)
 The most important part of this cycle is value
addition in service delivery- value addition could
be in any form i.e. Improved look and feel,
interactivity, access, speed etc. As there can be
- Direct improved service
- Indirect benefits
while direct benefits can be realized immediately ,
indirect benefits can accrue over a period of time.
For example, besides the sale, data can be used
for market research
Some of the internet services are call centers, online publishing,
medical consultancy, weather forecasting and GIS mapping, e-
commerce, travel and ticketing, online payments etc.

e-Services/Internet based services : can be defined as a service

available via the internet that completes tasks or conducts
transactions. Internet service is accessible via internet at a
particular uniform resource allocator(URL). Internet based services
that are capable of intelligent interaction would be able to discover
and negotiate with each other, mediate on behalf of their users,
and compose themselves into more complex services.
Compositions could be static or dynamic and these services could
interact across management domains and enterprise networks
For example priceline.com and expedia.com act as
brokers for airlines, hotel and car rentals respectively.
They are statically composed e-services that have pre
negotiated understanding with certain airlines and
hotels and broker their services through the portal.

In the emerging dynamic composition scenario , these

services would enter into agreements on the fly . In
order to enable registration and discovery of e-
services, electronic marketplaces/ exchanges are
coming up
These allow businesses or e-services to register
and thus be able to be discovered by other
businesses in a unified manner.

Another trend is that of users becoming mobile in

which these mobile users are accessing one or
more e-services for performing their tasks.
Accessing e-services through mobile devices is
often termed as mobile-commerce as opposed to
e-commerce
Since e-services is the latest trend which is taking
businesses into new routes and dimensions
unthinkable before, Gartner has classified e-services
into three phases:-
1. e-services will increase fivefold in next few years
2 e-services will get integrated with customer services
and support business offerings to customer with
increased involvement and interaction
3. Use of advance technologies to assist in automation
of response to meet customer needs (use of AI)
 Internet service providers
With the advent and advancement of internet
based services, which provide both convenience
and cost effective ways to the customer to avail
services , there has been an upsurge in
companies which are ready to explore options to
provide electronic services to customers.
Such Internet service providers range from
publishing services, banking and other financial
services, to travel services to e-commerce and
mobile commerce service providers etc.
These services are available in various domains
i.e. i)business to business ii) business to
customer iii) customer to customer and iv)
government to citizens . Government are also
trying to provide e-services/ internet based
services by offering whole range of services
like e- shiksha, e-bills payment, weather
related services, agriculture related
information for farmers etc.
Whereas Internet Access Providers, provide internet
access through their infrastructure like BSNL etc. ,
internet service providers can provide both internet
access as well as other services for their customers.
However, with the passage of time the difference
between IAP and ISP is diminishing and the terms are
also being inter -changeably. For example, many
people refer to telecom companies as being ISP’s i.e a
company providing internet Access service to its client.
However, one can understand the difference from the
point of view of the context in which the term ‘service’
is being used whether it is ‘ internet access service’ of
‘internet based services’.
Popular internet Access services include:-

Email - person to person messaging/document sharing

Newsgroups discussion groups on electronic bulletin boards
Instant messaging interactive coversations
telnet logging on to one system and do work on another
File transfer protocol transfer of file from one computer to
the other
world wide web www retrieval/display/ formatting of
information( ie text, audio, graphics, video)using hyperlinks
 Web servers
• A web server is a software for locating and managing
stored web pages. It locates the web pages requested
by a user on the computer where they are stored and
delivers the web pages to the user’s computer.
• Server Applications usually run on dedicated
computers , although they can all reside on a single
computer in smaller organizations .
• Most common web servers in use today are Apache
HTTP server, Microsoft’s internet information
Services(IIS). Apache is an open source product and is
free of charge and downloaded from the web
 How Google Web Servers work
User
Incoming requests
enters Web server
query network of
million PC’s

Request is sent to index servers which

describe web pages that contain and
keywords matching query and where
using page rank software the system measures those are stored on document servers
The popularity of each page through complex algorithms to come out with best pages
p
 Domain name System

• We know that in TCP/IP protocol every computer on the internet is

provided with an Internet Protocol Address called as IP address
which is a 32 bit number repersented by four strings of numbers
ranging from 0 to 255 separated by periods. For example IP address
of www.microsoft.com is 207.46.250.119
• When a user sends a message to another user on the internet, the
message is decomposed into packets using TCP protocol for its
transmission to recipient. Each packet contains its destination
address
• Packets are sent from client to network server and from there to
many other servers as necessary to arrive at a specific computer
with a known address . At the destination address , the packets are
reassembled into original message
• As it would be incredibly difficult for internet users to
remember strings of 12 numbers of IP addresses, the
Domain name system (DNS) converts domain names to
IP addresses . Domain name is easier as it resembles
english like name and corresponds to the unique 32 bit
IP address for each computer connected to the internet
• DNS servers, thus, maintain a database of the IP
addresses and their corresponding domain names
• To access a computer on internet one only needs to
specify its domain name
• DNS has a hierarchal structure –at the top is the root
domain . The child domain of the root is called a top
level domain and further the child of the top level
domain is called a second level domain .
• Top level domains are two/three character names e.g.
.com, .edu, .gov and various country codes such as .in,
.uk, .ca , etc.
• Second level domain names has two parts designating
a top level name and second level name e.g. buy.com;
nyu.edu; amazon.ca
• Host name at bottom of hierarchy designates a specific
computer on internet or private network
 Internet
root
domain

edu com gov org other

expedia google congress

sales

Computer
1
Computer1.sales.google.com
The list of domain names is going to expand as
more and more types of organisations and
industries join internet . Also there are new
class of top level domains that use non english
characters
 Approaches to Computing in
organizations
This deals with various approaches as to how
an organization can quantify the impact of an
IT application on business effectiveness. This is
needed so as to decide whether an
organization should invest in developing that
particular application or not e.g. should
organization invest in developing an IT
application for Sales Management?
 Various approaches to understand about business value
of an IT application are as follows
1. Cost effective approach: For example Net present
Value can be used to justify expenditure on IT .
According to this approach we should calculate present
value of expected stream of cash the investment in IT
application will generate. Then the present value of the
stream of expenditures required to undertake the
project is calculated . The difference gives net present
value of investment . Accordingly the project is
undertaken. This approach has shortcomings for IT
projects where it may be difficult to assess the
expected stream of operating profits
 2. Break Even Analysis: this shows relationship between
volume of output, total cost, and total revenue of firm.
At BE point the firm will have zero profit. So by
knowing when the project will breakeven , a firm can
ascertain the viability of the project
3. Business Value approach: organizations are making
huge investments in IT expecting substantial payoffs
but sometimes the results are contradictory. Business
Value is composed of three inter-related but quite
distinct issues ie productivity, profitability, and
consumer value. The business value approach takes
root from three theories ie theory of production,
theory of competitive strategy and consumer theory
 It has been found with empirical evidence that IT
projects can influence these three dimensional gains .
It remains to be seen as to which project will
significantly influence business value
4. IT chargeback approach : It has been seen that IT
infrastructure can not itself generate returns. IT
chargeback(Ross et al, 99) is an example of transfer
pricing – a familiar concept in decentralized
organizations) . Structuring the IT unit as a profit center
can justify the expenditure made on IT as also the locus
of accountability and responsibility with the Strategic
Business Unit (SBU) to have rationale investment.
Advantage is resource sharing and time sharing
5. Balanced Score Card Approach
Balance score card includes a set of measures that
gives top management a fast but comprehensive
view of business( Kaplan and Norton, 1992) . It
allows managers to look at the business from four
important perspectives
- customer perspective
- internal perspective
-innovation/learning perspective
- financial perspective
information technology can assist an
organization in number of ways ie becoming
customer centric, response time, quality
improvement, team work, etc. The challenge
is to link explicitly between IT initiatives with
all the above dimensions in discreet terms. For
example we know that IT can enhance
supplier partnership on a global scale but to
quantifying the same in terms of its effect on
other dimensions is challenging.
 for example technology can help in bringing excellence in
manufacturing but to justify an IT investment one will need to see
how IT helped in reduction in unit cost or reduction in cycle time
etc.

6. Options Approach : Firms make capital investments in order to

create and exploit profit opportunities. These opportunities are
‘options’ characterized by irreversibility and uncertainty, and the
choice of timing alters the investment decision in critical ways.
Most companies treat the IT investment as a capital expenditure but
do not recognize that they are trying to create a profit opportunity
using IT and they might succeed or fail as with any other capital
investment
this approach can be useful for SBU facing
uncertainty over the decision on how much to
invest in IT
Many feel that NPV approach is not well suited
for IT investments as sometimes the decision
‘not to invest’ can lead a firm to loose
competitive edge to a competitor who had the
foresight to invest in IT earlier
Options Approach stresses that companies have
opportunity to invest and they must decide how
to exploit these opportunities. It depends upon
the firms how to exploit these options optimally
and at the right time . Advantage of this approach
is that it does not ignore the value of creating
options . An investment that may sometime
appear uneconomical using NPV , in fact, may
create opportunities that enable a company to
turn circumstances in their favour
• 7 Benchmarking Approach: This approach
involves continuously identifying,
understanding, and adapting outstanding
practices and processes found inside and
outside the organisation . As per European
Comission benchmarking is a tool that aids in
searching for best practices that lead to
superior performance and then implementing
these best practices
 benchmarking provides the motivation for many
firms to rethink how they perform certain tasks .
Some examples of benchmarks created using IT
are:-
-Amazon.com was pioneer in e-retailing of books
- Dena bank was first to introduce internet banking
- HLL created zero inventory using IT
- ICICI was first to create bank intranet