INTRODUCTION TO E-COMMERCE,INTERNET AND THE WWW

Ch. 10 - Norris & West, E-Business Essentials 2nd Ed., J Wiley & Sons, 2001

Ch. 3 - Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, Financial Times/Prentice Hall 2001

THE INTERNETCan be described as:

A collection of thousands of individual networks connected and co-operating together for the purpose of information communication. http://www.norman.net.uk/

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HISTORY OF THE INTERNET• In 1969, the United States Defence Department's

Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) built an experimental computer network called ARPANET.

• Its purpose was to connect military researchers and universities, allowing them to share resources and use E-mail. The network was based on the concept of packet switching. i.e. if one computer on the network didn't work, information could still be shared.

HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

• Large organizations also created their own networks that hooked up to ARPANET.

• Foremost was the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), a federally funded agency that created five supercomputer centers in the 1980s to be used primarily by universities.

HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

• The military portion split off and NSF was responsible for developing the civilian network, NSFNET.

• NSF contracted with Merit Network Inc., which partnered with IBM and MCI to upgrade the network.

HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

• It was decided that NSFNET should be made available to university researchers, government employees, and other researchers.

• Then, commercial ventures and individuals soon followed.

• In 1987, the network became known as the Internet.

ABOUT THE INTERNET• The Internet Society supports:

• The Internet Activities Board (IAB) which handles architectural issues.

• IAB’s Internet Engineering Task Force oversees:

• Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)

The Internet Society

TCP/IP

• TCP breaks down the packets for transmission and reassembles them at the receiving computer.

• Each packet is enclosed in an IP envelope containing addressing and other information. This ensures that the packets are sent to the correct destination

The WORLD WIDE WEB

• The WWW is the fastest growing part of the internet and is made up of Web Pages.

• It operates on a client/server model (the client browser contacts the server which locates and send the information which is displayed by the browser).

• Navigation between the pages is achieved using HYPERTEXT.

HISTORY OF THE HYPERTEXT

• In 1945 Dr Vannevar Bush described a machine that allowed information to be linked in a way more conducive to human psychology than the format of books.

• Dr Doug Engelbart built a system called NLS (oN Line System) at Stanford Research Institute during the 60’s based on that concept

HYPERTEXT & WWW• Ted Nelson further developed the concept

of the "interconnectedness of knowledge” and coined the term hypertext. conceived a universal hypertext software framework, which he named Xanadu

• However it was Tim Berners-Lee whom created World Wide Web hypertext standards for the Internet at the European Centre for Particle Physics (CERN).

HYPERTEXT & WWW• The aim of the group with which he was

working was to "create a medium that would enable scientists to publish, resource and retrieve" information as and when it was required.

• To "facilitate universal access independent of platform, network or terminal" a new coding language was required.

WWW STANDARDS• This resulted in two new standards:

• HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) was based on the SMTP Internet standard for exchanging messages between e-mail systems to facilitate application exchanges.

• A second standard was needed to provide document structure and this was achieved with HyperText Markup Language (HTML) which was adapted from an already existing standard, SGML (Standard Generalised Markup Language).

HTML• HTML was designed for ease of use and

consists of one general hardwired tag set for all applications with predefined behaviours associated with each tag .

• HTML consists of layout orientated (neutral) elements and not content orientated (semantic) elements and this imposed restrictions upon its development potential for business applications.

HTML• Despite its non commercial origins the

commercialisation of the Internet began in the early 1990s.

• Ways to overcome the limits of HTML and capitalise on the ubiquity, interactivity and speed of the NET became increasingly important to business.

HTML• In an attempt to overcome some of the

shortcomings the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) upgraded the tag set for HTML several times with versions 2.0, 3.2 and 4.0. Others include Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and cascading style sheets.

• Commercial demands resulted in a plethora of solutions being deployed to meet the problems of using the NET for business.

THE E-COMMERCE REVOLUTION

• Since 1995 there has been a rapid expansion of what has become known as e-commerce and e-business.

• This expansion has its origins in the increasingly falling cost of hardware and software allowing affordable access to the Internet for both individuals and small businesses.

DRIVERS OF E-COMMERCE

• Entrepreneurs were quick to realise the opportunity that the Internet presented:

• To increase profits!– Cut costs

– Maximize revenue

• To engender business growth!

• To ensure survival!

DRIVERS OF E-COMMERCE

• “Competition is at the core of the success or failure of firms” (Porter, 85)

• It is the achievement of COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE which lies at the core of Strategic Management.

E-COMMERCE CAN CONFER COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

• Organizations derive competitive advantage from the ability to achieve market superiority via:• Differentiation• Cost leadership • Fast Response

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

• The achievement of competitive advantage will distinguish those companies that will grow and prosper from those that FAIL

• Therefore continual innovation in the application of e-business strategy will be critical to the survival of firms.

PUTTS LAW:

Technology is dominated by two types of people:

those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage

what they do not understand.