E-business infrastructure

1. E-business infrastructure Chapter 3

2. Learning outcomes Outline the hardware and software technologies used to build an e-business infrastructure within an organization and with its partners. Outline the hardware and software requirements necessary to enable employee access to the Internet and hosting of e-commerce services.

3. Management issues What are the practical risks to the organization of failure to manage e-commerce infrastructure adequately? How should staff access to the Internet be managed? How should we evaluate the relevance of web services and open source software?

4. E-business infrastructure • Refers to the combination of hardware such as servers and client PCs in an organization, the networkused 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. • Infrastructure also includes the architecture of the networks, hardware and software and where it is located. • Finally, infrastructure can also be considered to include the methods for publishing data and documents accessed through e-business applications. • A key decision with managing this infrastructureis which elements are located within the company and which are managed externally as third-party managed applications, data servers and networks.

5. Why the jargon? Why do business managers need to know about the jargon and technology?

6. Activity 3.1 Infrastructure risk assessment Make a list of the potential problems for customers of an online retailer. You should consider problems faced by users of e-business applications who are both internal and external to the organization. Base your answer on problems you have experienced on a web site that can be related to network, hardware and software failures or problems with data quality.

7. Typical problems Web site communications too slow. Web site not available. Bugs on site through pages being unavailable or information typed in forms not being executed. Ordered products not delivered on time E-mails not replied to Customers’ privacy or trust is broken through security problems such as credit cards being stolen or addresses sold to other companies.

8. continue • It will be apparent that although most of these problems are technical, they arise because humans have not managed the infrastructure adequately. They have not invested enough to solve these issues or have not tested solutions adequately to check for deficiencies. Additionally, in the case of some problems such as e-mails not being responded to, this may be entirely a problem in the process created (or not created) by managers to deal with inbound e-mails.

9. Figure 3.1 A five-layer model of e-business infrastructure

10. E-business infrastructure components • Figure 3.1summarizes how the different components of e-business architecture which need to be managed relate to each other. • The different components can be conceived of as different layers with defined interfaces between each layer. The different layers can best be understood in relation to a typical task performed by a user of an e-business system.

11. For example, an employee who needs to book a holiday will access a specific human resources application or program that has been created to enable the holiday to be booked (Level I in Figure 3.1). • This application will enable a holiday request to be entered and will forward the application to their manager and human resources department for approval. • To access the application, the employee will use a web browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome using an operating system such as Microsoft Windows XP or Apple OS X (Level II in Figure 3.1).

12. This systems software will then request transfer of the information about the holiday request across a network or transport layer (Level III in Figure 3.1). The information will then be stored in computer memory (RAM) or in long term magnetic storage on a web server (Level IV in Figure 3.1). • The information itself which makes up the web pages or content viewed by the employee and the data about their holiday request are shown as a separate layer (Level V in Figure 3.1), although it could be argued that this is the first or second level in an e-business architecture.

13. Kampas (2000) describes an alternative five-level infrastructure model of what he refers to as ‘the information system function chain’: 1. Storage/physical. Memory and disk hardware components (equivalent to Level IV in Figure 3.1). 2. Processing. Computation and logic provided by the processor (processing occurs at Levels I and II in Figure 3.1). 3. Infrastructure. This refers to the human and external interfaces and also the network, referred to as ‘extrastructure’. (This is Level III in Figure 3.1, although the human or external interfaces are not shown there.) 4. Application/content. This is the data processed by the application into information. (This is Level V in Figure 3.1.) 5. Intelligence. Additional computer-based logic that transforms information to knowledge. (This is also part of the application layer I in Figure 3.1.)

14. continue • Each of these elements of infrastructure presents separate management issues which we will consider separately. In this chapter, infrastructur management issues are introduced, while more detailed discussion of management solutions is presented in Chapters 10, 11 and 12. • We start our coverage of e-business infrastructure by considering the technical infrastructure for the Internet, extranets, intranets and the World Wide Web which are Levels II and III in Figure 3.1.

15. Table 3.1 Key management issues of e-business infrastructure

16. Table 3.1 Key management issues of e-business infrastructure (Continued)

17. Activity – www.google.com Write down all the different types of hardware and software involved from when a user types in a web address such as www.google.com to the web site being loaded

18. Internet technology • Internet: • The Internet refers to the physical network that links computers across the globe. It consists of the infrastructure of network servers and communication links between them that are used to hold and transport information between the client computers and web servers. • Client/server: • The client/server architecture consists of client computers, such as PCs, sharing resources such as a database stored on a more powerful server computer.

19. Figure 3.2 Physical and network infrastructure components of the Internet. (Levels IV and III in Figure 3.1)

20. Physical and network infrastructure components of the Internet (Levels IV and III in Figure 3.1) • Figure 3.2 shows how the client computers within homes and businesses are connected to the Internet via local Internet service providers (ISPs) which, in turn, are linked to larger ISPs with connection to the major national and international infrastructure or backbones which are managed by commercial organizations such as AT&T, UUNET and Verizon. • In the UK, at the London Internet Exchange in the Docklands area of east London, a facility exists to connect multiple backbones of the major ISPs within the UK onto a single high-speed link out of the UK into Europe and to the world. These high-speed links can be thought of as the motorways on the ‘information superhighway’, while the links provided from ISPs to consumers are equivalent to slow country roads.

21. Figure 3.3 Example hosting provider Rackspace (www.rackspace.com) • While it is possible for companies to manage their own services by setting up web servers within their own company offices, or to use their ISP, it is common practice to use a specialist hosting provider to manage this service. • For example, Rackspace (Figure 3.3) describe itself as ‘Europe’s fastest growing hosting company’. Since 2001 Rackspace has been hosting and supporting mission critical web sites, Internet applications, e-mail servers, security and storage services for over 4,000 customers. Rackspace also has US offices.

22. Figure 3.3 Example hosting provider Rackspace (www.rackspace.com)

23. Figure 3.4 Timeline of major developments in the use of the web

24. The Internet timeline • The Internet is only the latest of a series of developments in the way that the human race has used technology to disseminate information. • Kampas (2000) identifies ten stages that are part of five ‘megawaves’ of change. The first six stages are summarized in Table 3.2. • It is evident that many of the major advances in the use of information have happened within the last hundred years. • This indicates that the difficulty of managing technological change is likely to continue. • Kampas goes on to speculate on the impact of access to lower-cost, higher-bandwidth technologies.

25. Figure 3.5The Netcraft index of number of servers Source: Netcraft web Server Survey. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html. Netcraft • There are over one billion Internet users worldwide; but how big is the infrastructure they are accessing? One measure is the number of web servers. Netcraft has regularly surveyed the servers since 1995 to give a picture of the growth of the Internet through time (Figure 3.5). • The first survey it ran, launched in 1995, found only 18,957 sites, but by August 2008, there were 176 million! Note that Netcraft measures registered domains or Internet IP addresses (explained later in this chapter). • Some of these domains may not be active with regularly updated content, as the chart shows.

26. Figure 3.5 The Netcraft index of number of serversSource: Netcraft web Server Survey. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html. Netcraft

27. Intranet applications • Intranets are used extensively for supporting sell-side e-commerce from within the marketing function. They are also used to support core supply-chain management activities as described in the next section on extranets. A marketing intranet has the following advantages: 1. Reduced product lifecycles – as information on product development and marketing campaigns is rationalized we can get products to market faster. 2. Reduced costs through higher productivity, and savings on hard copy. 3. Better customer service – responsive and personalized support with staff accessing customers over the web. 4. Distribution of information through remote offices nationally or globally.

28. Intranets are also used for internal marketing communications since they can include the following types of information: 1. Staff phone directories; 2. Staff procedures or quality manuals; 3. Information for agents such as product specifications, current list and discounted prices, competitor information, factory schedules, and stocking levels, all of which normally have to be updated frequently and can be costly; 4. Staff bulletin or newsletter; 5. Training courses.

29. Firewall • A specialized software application mounted on a server at the point where the company is connected to the Internet. • Its purpose is to prevent unauthorized access into the company from outsiders. • Firewalls are necessary when creating an intranet or extranet to ensure that outside access to confidential information does not occur. Firewalls are usually created as software mounted on a separate server at the point where the company is connected to the Internet.

30. Figure 3.6 Firewall positions within the e-business infrastructure of the B2B company

31. Figure 3.6 Firewall positions within the e-business infrastructure of the B2B company • The use of firewalls within the infrastructure of a company is illustrated in Figure 3.6. • It is evident that multiple firewalls are used to protect information on the company. • The information made available to third parties over the Internet and extranet is partitioned by another firewall using what is referred to as the ‘demilitarized zone’ (DMZ). • Corporate data on the intranet are then mounted on other servers inside the company.

32. Activity – a common problem with intranets and extranets A B2B Company has found that after an initial surge of interest in its intranet and extranet, usage has declined dramatically. The e-business manager wants to achieve these aims: Increase usage Produce more dynamic content Encouraging more clients to order (extranet) What would you suggest?

33. Suggested answers Identify benefits Involve staff with development Find system sponsors, owners and advocates Train on benefits Keep content fresh, relevant and where possible, fun Use e-mail to encourage usage

34. Figure 3.8 Transaction log file example

35. Figure 3.8 Transaction log file example Inside transaction log files – why hits stands for ‘how idiots track success’ Figure 3.8 shows the detail recorded within a transaction log file. This shows the level of work that web servers have to do. This server extract is from DaveChaffey.com which uses the open-source Apache server to serve content. This example shows 10 requests received over a period of 5 seconds. Each line represents a GET request from a web browser for a file on the server. For each page, there are multiple lines or hits since each image or an embedded reference to a script or stylesheet in the page is downloaded separately.

36. Figure 3.9 Browsershots (www.browsershots.org) – a service for testing cross-browser compatibility.

37. Figure 3.9 Browsershots (www.browsershots.org) – a service for testing cross-browser compatibility • An example of a tool for designers to test compatibility is shown in Figure 3.9.

38. Figure 3.10E-consultancy Blog (www.econsultancy.com/news-blog) • An example of a useful blog which can keep marketing professionals up-to-date about e-business developments is the E-consultancy blog (Figure 3.10).

39. Understanding Internet access tools and concepts – match the definitions Atomisation concept Blogs Feeds IPTV Peer-to-peer Social networks Tagging VOIP

40. Figure 3.11 Personalized feed home page from iGoogle (www.igoogle.com)

41. Figure 3.11 Personalized feed home page from iGoogle (www.igoogle.com) • Figure 3.11 shows an example of a technology trial to deliver different personalized content into a personalized home page.

42. Figure 3.12 Joost service • The growth in popularity of IPTV or ‘Internet TV’, where TV and video are streamed via broadband across the Internet, is one of the most exciting developments in recent years. • In 2007 services offering streamed viewing of hundreds of channels from providers such as the Europe-based Joost (Figure 3.12, www.joost.com) and the US service Hulu (www.hulu.com) launched, and there are many competitors such as Babelgum, Vuze and Veoh. IPTV is sometimes referred to as non-linear TV or on-demand broadcasting to contrast it with the traditional broadcasting to schedule.

43. Figure 3.12 Joost service

44. URLS and domain names Web addresses are structured in a standard way as follows: http://www.domain-name.extension/filename.html What do the following extensions or global top level domains stand for? .com .co.uk, .uk.com .org or .org.uk .gov .edu, .ac.uk .int .net .biz .info

45. Box 3.3. Identify URL components: http://video.google.co.uk:80/videoplay?docid=-7246927612831078230&hl=en#00h02m30s Protocol Host or hostname Subdomain Domain name Top-level domain or TLD Second-level domain (SLD) The port The path URL parameter Anchor or fragment

46. HTML and XML HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)A standard format used to define the text and layout of web pages. HTML files usually have the extension .HTML or .HTM XML or eXtensible Markup Language A standard for transferring structured data, unlike HTML which is purely presentational

47. Figure 3.13 The TCP/IP protocol • Since this protocol is important for delivering the web pages, the letters http:// are used to prefix all web addresses. • HTTP messages are divided into HTTP ‘get’ messages for requesting and web page and HTTP ‘send’ message as shown in Figure 3.13.

48. Figure 3.13 The TCP/IP protocol

49. Figure 3.14 Home page index.html for an example B2B company in a web browser showing HTML source in text editor

50. Figure 3.14 Home page index.html for an example B2B company in a web browser showing HTML source in text editor. • A brief example of HTML is given for a simplified home page for an example B2B company in Figure 3.14. • The HTML code used to construct pages has codes or instruction tags such as <TITLE>. to indicate to the browser what is displayed. The <TITLE>. tag indicates what appears at the top of the web browser window. Each starting tag has a corresponding end tag usually marked by a ‘/’, for example, <B>plastics</B> to embolden ‘plastics’. • The simplicity of HTML compared to traditional programming languages makes it possible for simple web pages to be developed by non-specialists such as marketing assistants, particularly if templates for more complex parts of the page are provided. Interactive forms and brochures and online sales are more complex and usually require some programming expertise, although tools are available to simplify these.