Introduction to e-Business

History of WWW Late 1960s, ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency) of Dept of Defense sponsored some of MIT graduate student at MIT's Project Mac (now known as Lab of Comp Science, home of WWW Consortium) ARPA conducted conference in Uni of Illinois in Urbana Champaign that attended by several dozen ARPA-funded graduate students to meet and share the ideas about blueprints for networking the main computer systems of about a dozen ARPA-funded universities and research institutions. All systems will be connected with communication line of 56KB. At that time, most people connected over telephone line with 110 bits/sec.

History of WWW (contd) After conference, ARPA proceeded to implement ARPAnet, grandparent of today's internet. ARPAnet enabled researchers to share each other's computer, but the most popular of quick and capable communication is electronic mail ( ). One of the ARPA goals: to allow multiple users to send and receive information at the same time over the same communications path (ie: phone lines). The technique is called packet switching in which digital data was sent in small packages call packets (contain: data, address information, error-control information and sequencing information).

History of WWW (contd) The protocol used called TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) that ensured messages were properly routed from sender to receiver. In parallel with this early evolution of the internet, organizations worldwide were implementing their own networks both intra- organization and inter-organization. The challenge was to get these networking to intercommunicate. ARPA accomplished it with developing IP (Internetworking Protocol) that created network of networks The combined of set protocols is now commonly called TCP/IP, current architecture of the Internet.

History of WWW (contd) Initially, only universities and research institutions were the users of internet, then military became the big users. Eventually, government decided to allow access to internet for commercial use. As so many users saturated into the internet, the poor quality of communication line started some problems. Competition among communication providers were generated to provide huge demands of bandwidth (information carrying capacity of communication lines)

History of WWW (contd) The World Wide Web (WWW) allows computer users to locate and view multimedia-based documents on almost any subjects. Even though, the Internet was developed almost 4 decades a go, the introduction of WWW was a relatively recent event. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee of Europe developed first WWW that form the backbone of todays internet. Todays, application can be written to communicate among the worlds hundreds of millions of computers. It makes information instantly and conveniently accessible worldwide. It is changing the nature of the way business is done.

Internet & WWW Todays, computing costs have decreased dramatically because of the rapid developments in both hardware and software technology. Advances in hardware and software have led to the explosion of the Internet and WWW. There have been predictions that the Internet will eventually replace the telephone system, newspaper with electronic news media, books with e-book, radio and television, etc.

Overview of e-Business Business on the Internet: Age of Knowledge, Knowledge is power, Content is king Successful e-businesses are those that recognize the needs of their target audiences and match those needs with relevant content Building an e-business not limited to seasoned professionals

Overview of e-Business (contd) E-commerce involves exchange among customers, business partners & vendors Example: – Customer with sales – Supplier with manufacturer – Shipment provider with distributor E-Business is composed of these same elements, but also includes operations that are handled within the business itself Example: production, development, infrastructure & management

Overview of e-Business (contd) Setting up and running an e-business, especially one that processes a large number of transactions, requires technical, marketing, and advertising expertise Customers want access to products and services on 24/7 basis, and the easiest way to provide that is to move operations online. The businesses that provide the most reliable, most functional, most user-friendly and fastest services will be the ones that succeed

Overview of e-Business (contd) Bank are moving all their operations online. People can pay their bills, write and cash checks, trade stocks, take out loans, mortgage their homes & manage their assets online. Traditional brick & mortar stores are already being supplemented by a multitude of electronic storefront called click & mortar. It is now possible for businesses to operate effectively without real office Many e-businesses can personalize users browsing experiences