A Future for Digital Commerce: Research and Education Opportunities Walt Scacchi ATRIUM Laboratory University of Southern California

Overview Background: ECommerce on the Internet Information Logistics Computational Business Processes Research and Education Opportunities Conclusions

Emergence of EC on the Internet Benefits: Customer, Supplier, Operational Providing ISPs and WWW presence Electronic publishing and advertising Electronic retailing Electronic customer channels Electronic data interchange (EDI) Networked data warehousing and mining Loosely-coupled business process networks

Emergence of EC on the Internet See Electronic_Commerce.html for details, definitions, and examples.

Information Logistics What is it? What is it good for? Who should care?

Information Logistics What is it? Addresses the coordinated movement of very large quantities of (semi-)structured information/data sets over shared information infrastructures Efforts to move aggregate quantities of information in the range of to bytes (1GB to 10EB) can already be anticipated

Information Logistics What is it--Activities Planning and mapping Acquisition Cataloging and warehousing Distribution Transportation Installation and building Adaptive replanning (Remote) Maintenance Termination

Information Logistics: What is it good for? ECommerce-based data warehousing International caching of digital libraries Large-scale roll out of new software products (e.g., MS WindowsY2K) Global contracting services for multi- national enterprises Virtual database “catching” and “casting” Other high value ($$$) information services

Information Logistics: Who should care? See previous slide, then deduce or guess which companies and government agencies would be interested.

Computational Business Processes Growing interest among start-ups for Internet-based sources for the provision of intermediate products or services. Potential trading partners can negotiate and electronically contract for remote sourcing agreements via network ties. Can lead to the configuration of virtual enterprises via CBP components

Computational Business Processes--Life Cycle Activities

Computational Business Processes See Life_Cycle.html for definitions, experience reports, and examples. See Process_Life_Cycle.html for the paper.

Computational Business Processes

Research and Education Opportunities in EC How do I go about setting up a new business on the Internet? Where do I try to locate it so as to get maximum exposure to the targeted customer base? How should I define a product line that can be readily differentiated from competing offers which can be rapidly accessed and demonstrated over the Internet?

Research and Education Opportunities in EC What sorts of barriers to the entry of competitors or competing products can be rapidly erected and affordably sustained? What are representative strategies for achieving or sustaining competitive advantage in open electronic markets that otherwise can quickly be reduced to simple price-based competition?

Research and Education Opportunities in EC What kinds of financial controls and performance measurements are needed to manage Internet-based business activity costs? What kinds of billing systems and payment schemes will offer the greatest flexibility in managing cash-flow while maximizing customer satisfaction?

Research and Education Opportunities in EC We need to adopt, implement, and proliferate the use of experimental learning laboratories for trying out new forms of EC ELLs can serve as testbeds for computational business processes for EC. ELLs can be developed for each of the academic, corporate, and government markets.

Conclusions The current emphasis of EC is on investments in technology, rather than into the supporting business processes. The lessons of good business management are not well addressed, compared to the technical problems and solutions pertaining to the information infrastructure for EC.

Conclusions There are substantial R&D opportunities in figuring out how to model, integrate, and enact inter-organizational business processes for use in EC information infrastructures.