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E-Business

Lecture 3: E-Business Infrastructure

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Agenda

• The Internet – Internet Timeline– Intranet and Extranet– World Wide Web– URL– Domain Names

• Communication Standards– TCP/IP– HTTP Protocol

• Web Pages Standards– HTML– XML

• EDI• ASP

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Introduction

• Defining an adequate e-business infrastructure is vital to all companies adopting e-business.

• Infrastructure refers to:– Combination of hardware such as servers and client

PCs in an organization– Network used to link this hardware and the software

applications used to deliver services to workers within the e-business and also to its partners and customers.

– Architecture of networks, hardware and software.

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The Internet

• The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide.

• It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and optical networking technologies.

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• Innovation Phase, 1964–1974– Creation of fundamental building blocks

– E.g. the concept of packet switching was introduced.

• Institutionalization Phase, 1975–1994– Large institutions provide funding and legitimization– Department of defense and the National Science Foundation (NSF),

provided funding

• Commercialization Phase,1995–present– Private corporations take over, expand Internet backbone and local

service– During this period internet became a technological need in government

agencies and companies

Evolution of the Internet

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The Internet Timeline

• In this present age, the Internet is considered the most important means of global communications.

• [1950-1970]– 1958 – President Eisenhower requested funding for the establishment of

the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). His request was approved.

– 1962 – J.C. R. Licklider and W.Clark wrote a paper on the concept of the Internet. The paper was titled “On-Line Man Computer Communications”.

– 1965 – The first network experiment took place at the MIT Lincoln Lab, and it had two computers communicating with each other. The experiment was conducted by Larry Roberts.

– 1966 – The ARPA project started with Larry Roberts as the chief scientist.

– 1969 – The ARPA was introduced online as a connection between 4 major universities in the US.

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The Internet Timeline

• [1970-1985]– 1972 – Ray Tomlinson, a computer scientist in Cambridge

Massachusetts, introduced the electronic mail. The symbol @ was used in the email address to separate the name of the user and the name of the network.

– 1973 – The design of the Transmission Control Panel/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was developed, and it would become the standard for Internet communication in 1983.

– 1976 – President candidate Jimmy Carter used the email to make plans for his campaign.

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The Internet Timeline

– 1981 – Microsoft developed Disk Operating System (DOS).

– 1982 – The term “Internet” was introduced.

– 1984 – The Domain Name System (DNS) was set up, and domain names were given extensions like .com, .org, and .edu.

– 1985 – America Online, which was then known as Quantum Computer Services, made its debut.

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The Internet Timeline

[1985 – 1999]

• 1988 – The Internet Worm virus temporarily disabled 10% of the Internet servers around the world.

• 1989 – The World (world.std.com) became the first dial-up Internet access provider. Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web to enable users to use hyperlinks to connect to documents in websites.

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The Internet Timeline

• 1990 – Peter Deutsch of Montreal’s McGill University developed an FTP site archive called Archie to index the Internet. The Archie was regarded as the first search engine.

• 1991 – The Gopher point-and-click navigation was designed at the University of Minnesota.

• 1994 – The official website of the White House, www.whitehouse.gov, was launched. Commercial websites were set up and marketing campaigns were carried out with the use of email, leading to the coining of the term spamming. Netscape Communications was established by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark, who also started the Navigator browser.

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The Internet Timeline

• 1995 – America Online, CompuServe, and Prodigy became providers of dial-up Internet access. The Java Internet programming language was released by Sun Microsystems. Windows 95 was introduced.

• 1996 – The Internet was used by around 45 million people, of which 30 million were Americans. There were personal computers in 43.2 million households in the US, and 14 million of these had Internet access.

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The Internet Timeline

• 1997 – The term weblog was introduced, and it was later changed to blog.

• 1998 – The first office of search engine giant Google was set up in California.

• 1999 – Shawn Fanning, a college student, developed a computer application called Napster to allow music to be swapped on the Internet. As Internet shopping became more popular, the term E-Commerce was frequently used. MySpace.com was started.

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The Internet Timeline

[2000 onwards]

• 2000 – Many Internet users were hit by viruses, such as “Stages” and “Love Bug”, and many companies were temporarily forced to shut down their networks. Investment capital on the Internet dried up, and many dotcoms had to be closed down. Time Warner was bought by America Online for $16 billion, resulting in the biggest merger ever.

• 2001 – The number of email messages sent daily had increased to 9.8 billion. Wikipedia was launched.

• 2002 – About 544.2 million people around the world were using the Internet, with 164.14 million in the US alone.

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The Internet Timeline

• 2003 – The Apple iTunes Music Store was launched and it offered downloads of songs at the price of 99 cents each. 50% of all emails sent were unsolicited emails, and President Bush signed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to reduce the number of unsolicited emails received by Internet users.

• 2004 – The amount of money spent online had reached $117 billion, which was a 23% increase from the previous year.

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The Internet Timeline

• 2005 – YouTube was launched.

• 2006 – The number of websites on the Internet had risen to 92 million.

• 2008 – In a bid to compete with Google, Microsoft made an offer to buy Yahoo! for a price of $44.6 billion.

Activity 1

• Give reasons why the Internet took a long time to develop into today’s essential business tool.

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Intranet and Extranets

• Intranet

– TCP/IP network located within a single organization for communications and processing

• Extranet

– Formed when firms permit outsiders to access their internal TCP/IP networks

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Intranet Applications

– Email– Web publishing of corporate documents, Web forms, and Web-

to-database links that allow users to access information. – Newsletters, information on benefits and enrollment– Job listings and classifieds– Libraries– Stock quotes– Maps– Historical data– Catalogs– Price lists– Information on competitors' products– Customer service data – Etc…

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Advantages of Intranet

• Speedier communication and access to information than the Internet.

• Security and protection in the form of the aforementioned firewalls as well as password-protected access and secure servers.

• Allows companies to control their business easier and manage their employees more successfully.

• Less paperwork, increased productivity, added flexibility, and versatility are other factors that intranet users take advantage of.

All of this adds up to a bottom line that is attractive in any business decision: the ability to save money and increase profits.

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Extranet Applications

• Supporting day-to-day collaboration by service companies who need to share and organize documents with their clients – Exchanging billing invoices and payments through Electronic

Data Interchange (EDI) – Sharing online catalogs with suppliers, vendors and customers

to eliminate printing costs – Entering into joint ventures with other businesses – Collaborating with other companies to develop training

materials – Providing online services to customers

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Advantages of Extranet

• Extranets can improve organization productivity by automating processes that were previously done manually (e.g.: reordering of inventory from suppliers). Automation can also reduce the margin of error of these processes.

• Extranets allow organization or project information to be viewed at times convenient for business partners, customers, employees, suppliers and other stake-holders. This cuts down on meeting times and is an advantage when doing business with partners in different time zones.

• Information on an extranet can be updated, edited and changed instantly. All authorised users therefore have immediate access to the most up-to-date information.

• Extranets can improve relationships with key customers, providing them with accurate and updated information.

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Activity 1

• Explain how useful are intranet and extranet for an e-business(B2B Companies).

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World Wide Web

• The World Wide Web is a vast repository of data and information connected through hyperlinks.

• Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the common language used to create Web documents.

• It is very easy to use and is now included in most common software applications, such as Word, WordPerfect, and Excel.

• As the technology improves to include audio, video, animated graphics, and movies on Web sites

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World Wide Web

• Web Browsers– Software used to access the information on the WWW that is

stored on Web Servers.– Internet Explorer (67%) and Firefox (23%) dominate the market

– Other browsers include:• Netscape• Opera• Safari (for Apple)• Google’s Chrome

• Web Servers– Used to store, manage and supply the information that is on

the WWW.

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World Wide Web

• URL - Uniform Resource Locator – Address used by Web browser to identify location of content on the Web

– E.g: http://www.azimuth-interactive.com/flash_test

[https: secure site]

• Domain Name– IP address expressed in natural language

• Domain Name System (DNS)– Allows numeric IP addresses to be expressed in natural language

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Search Engines

• Identify Web pages that match queries based on one or more techniques

– Keyword indexes, page ranking

• Also serve as:– Shopping tools

– Advertising vehicles (search engine marketing)

– Tool within e-commerce sites

• Outside of e-mail, most commonly used Internet activity

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How Google Works

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World Wide Web

• Internet Access Software Applications– Emails– Chats– Newsgroups– FTP– Blogs– Wikis– WWW– Social Networks

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Communication Standards

• TCP/IP– TCP/IP is the communication protocol for communication between

computers on the Internet.– TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol.– TCP/IP defines how electronic devices (like computers) should be

connected to the Internet, and how data should be transmitted between them.

• TCP/IP is TCP and IP working together.– TCP takes care of the communication between your application software

(i.e. your browser) and your network software.– IP takes care of the communication with other computers.– TCP is responsible for breaking data down into IP packets before they are

sent, and for assembling the packets when they arrive.– IP is responsible for sending the packets to the correct destination.

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Communication Standards

• HTTP– The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an Application

Layer protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems.

– HTTP is a request/response standard typical of client-server computing.

• In HTTP, web browsers typically act as clients, while an application running on the computer hosting the web site acts as a server.

• The client, which submits HTTP requests, is also referred to as the user agent.

• The responding server, which stores or creates resources such as HTML files and images, may be called the origin server.

• In between the user agent and origin server may be several intermediaries, such as proxies, gateways, and tunnels.

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Web Page Standards

• HTML• HTML is a language for describing web pages.

– HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language– HTML is not a programming language, it is a markup language – A markup language is a set of markup tags– HTML uses markup tags to describe web pages

• HTML Documents = Web Pages– HTML documents describe web pages – HTML documents contain HTML tags and plain text – HTML documents are also called web pages

• The purpose of a web browser (like Internet Explorer or Firefox) is to read HTML documents and display them as web pages. The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of the page.

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Web Page Standards

• XML• What is XML?

– XML stands for EXtensible Markup Language – XML is a markup language much like HTML – XML was designed to carry data, not to display data – XML tags are not predefined. You must define your own tags – XML is designed to be self-descriptive

• The Difference Between XML and HTML– XML is not a replacement for HTML.– XML and HTML were designed with different goals.– XML was designed to transport and store data, with focus on what data is.

• HTML was designed to display data, with focus on how data looks. • HTML is about displaying information, while XML is about carrying information.

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Electronic Data Interchange

• EDI is the computer-to-computer exchange of business information using a public standard.

• EDI is a central part of Electronic Commerce because it enables businesses to exchange information electronically much faster, more cheaply and more accurately than is possible using a paper-based system.

• How Does EDI Work?– In EDI, electronic documents (purchase orders, bills, etc.) are given

standardized electronic formats and numbers, so everyone involved can correctly interpret the information being transferred.

– Value-Added networks (VANs), maintained by companies similar to long-distance phone companies, provide telecommunications connectivity between Trading Partners.

– Translation software is used by each Trading Partner to translate the business data.

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What Are the Benefits of Electronic Commerce and Electronic Data Interchange?

• Greatly increase opportunities through wider diffusion of procurement information.

• Improve overall business quality through better record-keeping, fewer errors in data, reduced processing time, less reliance on human interpretation of data, and minimized unproductive time.

• Reduce inventory because of faster and more accurate filling of orders. • Reduce mailing costs due to mailroom sorting/distribution time, elimination of

lost documents, and reduction of postage. • Reduce order time since EDI allows businesses to process orders much

faster. • Improve customer relationships with higher customer satisfaction due to

faster response to orders and less paper to handle. • Reduce billing and closeout time, since orders are filled and delivered more

quickly. • Provide better management decision-making information with accurate

documentation and audit trails of transactions identifying areas of greatest potential for cost reduction or efficiency improvement.

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Application Service Provider

• An ASP is a business that provides computer-based services to customers over a network.

• The need for ASPs has evolved from the increasing costs of specialized software that have far exceeded the price range of small to medium sized businesses. As well, the growing complexities of software have led to huge costs in distributing the software to end-users. Through ASPs, the complexities and costs of such software can be cut down. The complexities and costs of such software can be cut down.

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Application Service Provider

• In addition, the issues of upgrading have been eliminated from the end-firm by placing the onus on the ASP to maintain up-to-date services, 24 x 7 technical support, physical and electronic security and in-built support for business continuity and flexible working.

• Clients for ASP services include businesses, government organizations, non-profits, and membership organizations.

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Case Study

• Case Study Week 3