Abstract

Cloud computing impacts numerous industries, including: e-learning, e-commerce, and healthcare.
It offers high-efficiency and low-cost online services which provide a high economic value. This is
definitely also the next revolution in the internet and business world. More e-commerce enterprises
are currently moving to cloud computing to attain high practical value. It provides an overview of
cloud computing in e-commerce by addressing various meanings for both terms, highlighting the
advantages and drawbacks of implementing cloud computing in e-commerce, and addressing a
proposed E-commerce system for cloud computing. Cloud computing is a computing model, where
a broad pool of systems is connected in private or public networks to provide dynamically scalable
application, data, and file storage infrastructure. With the advent of this technology, the costs of
processing, hosting software, storing information, and distribution are greatly reduced. Cloud
computing is a general term for something that includes the delivery of services hosted over the
Internet. Ecommerce, also known as ecommerce or internet trade, refers to the purchase and sale
of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute such
transactions. Ecommerce is often used to refer to the online sale of physical products, but it can
also describe any type of commercial transaction facilitated via the internet.

Introduction

Background

Cloud computing has developed quickly from a theoretical concept to the real applications in the
past few years. More and more businesses and research agencies are striving to release cloud
computing strategies and business models, perfect cloud computing technology, and propose the
related applications of cloud computing. It enables the dynamic computing capacity, storage
capacity, network exchanging capability and information service capability. Cloud computing serves
the users as “pay-as-service”, which supplies and delivers the end users with IT services based on
their demand. It departs the IT service processes and transfers them to the cloud platform, which
leads to the new service modes such as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service)
and SaaS(Software as a Service). As a new information means and mode, cloud computing is being
applied to many industries creatively. E-commerce is a typical industry which is being influenced
inevitably by the features of cloud computing. This paper discusses the impacts of cloud computing
on the traditional E-commerce respectively from the perspective of technology, service and industry
chain and presents the necessary suggestions on the development of E-commerce businesses in the
cloud era.

There's no question that we're living in an age in which things get older when they're still at the
height of their modernity, the pace of technological progress is rising and hardly a day goes by
without a witness appearing about the critical changes in all sectors, including the company sector.
In the past, you had to physically rent an office room to sell goods that added various costs, but
Ecommerce emerged and offered companies the ability to sell items online without having to rent a
store like before. These days, many more e-commerce companies, especially small and mediumsized
businesses, are taking advantage of the benefits of cloud computing, where the growth of this
innovation has led them to compete with large corporations in providing goods and services as they
have a broad network given their limited network. Businesses have widely recognized the
advantages of investing in cloud computing technologies such as efficiency, reliability, improving
availability, and rising e-business costs. Cloud computing is a realistic approach to experiencing
direct cost benefits and it has the ability to turn a data center from a capital-intensive setup into a
priced variable environment. The theory of cloud computing is based on a very basic concept of the
capabilities being reusable. In today's era of advancing technology, cloud computing has taken an
edge to lead the IT sector. Cloud computing is the modern technology that has a broader perspective
for development and to enhance the current IT structure. Its vast practical applications had a
significant influence on the operational activities in different industries. The growth in IT sector has
led to high capacity networks, low cost storage devices and low-cost computers which has eventually
led the elevation of Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is a series of network that includes
computers connected in large numbers through internet and it is constructed around series of
hardware and software which are accessed remotely through any browser. Basically, its main
objective is to deliver computer system resource management services which includes data storage,
managing large databases, operating servers, managing various networks to handle the servers and
switches, regulating the data centre activities, software management, analytics, faster
computational power and many more such services to its user through the Internet. Cloud
computing serves the users with its "pay as you go" model through which it charges the
administrators for its operating expenses. This type of computing relies on sharing computer
resources to handle applications rather than having local servers or personal devices.

Cloud computing has attained the peak in the IT sector due to its numerous features like Low
maintenance, Easy access through any device via internet, Cost Effective, Business continuity,
Collaboration efficiency, access to automatic updates, flexibility of work practices, Scalability, Better
Security, Reliability, Disaster Recovery, Efficiently dealing with highly sensitive data, Sustainability,
Competitive Edge, Quality Control, Improved Workplace Productivity, Rapid Deployment,
Environmental Friendly (helps in Carbon Footprint Reduction), etc.

On the other hand, E-Commerce also referred as electronic commerce or the internet commerce is
the buying or selling of services or goods on internet. It has taken an edge over the Retail market
because of the convenience and comfort that it provides to its users. Cloud computing has eased the
operational and management activities in E-Commerce industry. As it overcame the clash between
the activities of enterprises' E-commerce and the lack of resources, enterprises have by the
implementation of Cloud computing service models. Cloud Computing has enabled E-commerce
enterprises to lend the IT infrastructure rather than purchasing the resources to establish their
technical structure. It also provides good economic efficiency for the growth of the E-Commerce
sector.

Through this research, we intend to analyse the level of influence Cloud computing had on the
operational and management activities of E-Commerce. Since the cloud computing reduced the
economical expense of E-commerce towards IT resources, the E-commerce companies could invest
that money in the further development of the Company. This research aims to gauge the growth E
commerce industry could achieve after including cloud computing in their technology.

Motivation

Cloud computing offers a brand new model of services that area unit totally different from ancient IT
services. Initial of all, E-commerce enterprises service by virtue of the cloud platform offers IT
resources like code, hardware, infrastructure, and data. Secondly, an E-commerce Company is
allowed to access the IT resources rather like the utility services on the cloud platform and pay
money for them for a particular person's services. Through the transaction system, no firm has
required to incur high expenses on getting devices, they'll opt for acceptable and appropriate
 devices and pays rent for a particular person’s services. In short, because of the emergence of
cloud computing, the construct of ancient IT licensing mode modified and brand new philosophy
of services came into existence that provides the advantage of low cost. Cloud computing
migrates outsourcing into E-commerce could be a vital contribution as a result of with the help of
its standardized and uniform service platform will be established by a business that performs as
per customers’ demand.

When selecting that cloud device that might best work for a business, the question becomes what
proportion of knowledge storage is required and what performance demands are placed on the
cloud. Because as the name implies, massive knowledge maybe a massive assortment of
knowledge typically varied in scope that grows as extra knowledge is recorded and processed.
Given the inherent size of huge knowledge, firms should verify precisely however massive is their
big information, as not dealings enough area from a cloud service the supplier might find yourself
giving a corporation important infrastructure issues and maybe not enable them to use their
massive information analysis as intended or to its full capabilities.

Objectives

 To gauge the extent of influence of cloud computing in the E-commerce industry.

 To ascertain the usage patterns of cloud computing in the operational activities of E-
commerce industry.
 To examine the advantages and disadvantages of Cloud Computing in E-Commerce
Business.
 To identify the factors which promote or deter the usage of these platforms.
 To analyse the improved efficiency of Cloud computing in comparison with the
Traditional IT infrastructure.
 To discern the perceptions and attitudes of the various types of the factors which
influence the technology in E-Commerce.
 To determine the level of usage of the different types of Cloud Computing in the E-
Commerce sector.

Research Question

While talking about the Cloud computing in the E-commerce industry there are various research
questions that come up by its existence. Following are the few questions:

 To what extent has cloud computing been easily accessible to E-commerce and
business within the IT industry?
 What are the legal rules and regulations or issues involved in cloud computing?
 What can be the possible challenges or obstacles handled by the Business people
who involve cloud computing? Are there any disadvantages of this new
revolutionary technology?
 Is cloud computing able to create a great influence on E-commerce technology?
 How is the big data of the massive companies handled by the technology of Cloud
computing?
II. RELATED WORK

The paper concentrates on how cloud computing environments impacts on E-Commerce, the main
background of the influences of cloud computing has to be established.

The impact of cloud environment has been discussed by different literatures. Firstly, Kasherfi, F., Et
al.[2] consider the impacts of cloud environment on the processes and present a new method of
cloud computing. The paper discuss the positive impacts of cloud environment on e-commerce small
and big companies and organizations such as yahoo, Google, etc. In this, authors highlight the
technical influence of cloud computing rather than its business impacts. Lai, S.[4] examine the
influence of cloud computing on traditional software project and figures out the softwares replaced
by cloud computing. Mainly, it process the security strategies, migration and the corresponding
tools. Li J. and Liu J.[1] examine that the lack of teaching resources which are averting the
educational in rural China. According to the authors, cloud computing help to solve the problems.
However, all these possible benefits of cloud computing environment are only discussed. Zhang, H.
[12] point out that cloud technology will become the best choice of the virtual operation process due
to its features such as security and reliability and cloud computing can be applied in different levels
in management process.

In the Related work review, there are mainly three problems with the existed researches: firstly, few
research mentions the impact of cloud computing environment on E-commerce. Actually, the fastly
development of Ecommerce requires the participation of cloud computing environment into its
technical framework, business architecture and services. As a result, the development of e-
commerce businesses and industry will be significantly impacted. Secondly, the existed research
usually focuses on one or two aspects of cloud computing’s impacts on a specified field. There is no
paper that offers the comprehensive analysis of the impact of cloud computing on e-commerce
business. Finally, few researches gives the case analysis to make the points more persuasive. By
virtue of describing the changes of E-commerce in the cloud era, the paper analyzes the impacts of
cloud computing on E-commerce enterprises and industry chain in detail.

III. THE APPROACH OF CLOUD COMPUTING

Today, there are many detonations of cloud computing. As according to Wikipedia, Cloud computing
includes deploying groups of multiple remote servers and software networks that permit different
kinds of data sources which can be uploaded for real time processing for the generation of results
without the need to store (processed) data on the cloud. In short, it uses the public for calculation or
other way to shared information and resources.

IV. DEPLOYMENT MODEL OF CLOUD COMPUTING

It is most primary to decide which type of cloud model is selected for secure cloud services. There
are basically three types of deployment model in cloud computing.
 Figure 1. Development Model of Cloud Computing
4.1 Public Cloud
A cloud is called a "public cloud" when the cloud computing service are given over a network that is
open only for publicly use. This model is based on pay-per-use method, same as prepaid electric
meter technology. It is ideal for businesses seeking less complex Information technology hosting.
Public cloud allows user’s access to the cloud via interfaces using mainstream web browser.
Applications run on it have either seasoned demand or unforeseeable traffic. It is less secure cloud
models

4.2 Private Cloud

Private cloud model is designed with organization’s internal enterprise data center. Here scalable
resources and virtual services are provided by the cloud vendors are combine together and available
for cloud users to share and use Only the organization people and designated stakeholders may have
use to operate on a specific private cloud. Thus, private cloud model is much more secure than
public cloud model. Just like Intranet, all the resources and applications are managed by organization
itself.

4.3 Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud is a combination of both public cloud model and private cloud model which is centrally
circumscribed and managed by a secure network. It gives more secure control of the data and
applications and provides various parties to access data and information over the Internet.

V. CLOUD COMPUTING DELIVERY MODEL

After cloud deployment models, there are three types of cloud delivery models. Delivery models are
as follows-

5.1 Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas)

IaaS is a single layer cloud model where cloud computing vendor’s dedicated resources are only
shared with contracted users at pay-per-use service. This model is also provides different degrees of
financial and functional pliability which is not found in inside data servers or with co-location
services, because computing resources can be added or released much more quickly and cost-
effectively than in an internal data servers As a initial investment cost of computer servers, results,
networking devices, processing power etc. are minimized.

Figure 2. Delivery Model of Cloud Computing

5.2 Software as a Service (Saas)

SaaS is based on pay-per-use basis costing model where software applications are leased out to
contracted organizations by specialized SaaS sellers. SaaS giver may host the software either in their
own data network center. Initially software has limited functionality, it can be easily customized
based on demand which is billed accordingly Softwares are accessed using secured web browser
over the Internet. Web services (WS) security,

XML encryption, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) etc is used in enforcing data protection transmitted over
the Internet.

5.3 Platform as a Service (Paas)

PaaS cloud model layer is similar to IaaS model with an additional “rented” features. Virtual
machines are secured against unauthorized attacks such as cloud malware and hackers. PaaS model
services are expensive than IaaS and SaaS. Cloud sellers and users need to maintain cloud computing
network security at all interfaces. In a virtual platforms physical resources, infrastructures as well as
business applications and middlewares environment are being consumed as services in the cloud
models

VI. E-COMMERCE AND ITS MODELS

Electronic commerce is one of the main criteria of revolution of Information Technology and
communication in the field of economy. The Current edge for business today is Electronic
Commerce, it refer to electronic transaction such as buying, selling, information flow and fund
transfer over the internet. E-commerce broadly encompasses all business activities taking place over
internet. E-commerce has the following Models:

 Business-to-Business (B2B): the transaction between business enterprises.

 Consumer-to-Business (C2B): this mean the customers selling products and services to the
Business Enterprises.
 Business-to-Consumer (B2C): this means the transaction among Business Enterprises and
customers.
 Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C): this mean the business transaction among users or consumers.

VII. CLOUD COMPUTING AND ELECTRONIC COMMERCE (E-COMMERCE)

Cloud Computing and E-commerce are now two important part in our daily uses. Due to cost
beneficial both are famous. Cloud computing service saves enterprise’s the cost of Information
Technology infrastructure, on the other hand E-commerce provides traders to do business without
renting or buying a business entity shop. Cloud gives positive opportunities for e-commerce, but
before use it, organization should have a trade-off between costs. Many researcher illustrate that
cloud computing and E-commerce the most attractive industries. That has been developed at fastly
in recent years, with the Economic, Political, Technological and Sociological factors have had a
positive impact on its development. E-commerce and cloud computing are described as follow by
several researchers:

 The quick growth of the global economy increase the developing of online web based
transactions.
 Online shopping is becoming a new trend as it is more convenient comparing to traditional way
of shopping.
 The security of data and information technologies are improved rapidly.
 Because of this, the level of education and IT skills of customers have been improved.
 The developing of telecommunications techniques accelerate the implement of e-commerce
Industry across all over the world.
 Cloud Computing give chances for small-scale and middle-scale business companies to move to
the Internet technology with less efforts

VIII. A FRAMEWORK FOR E-COMMERCE BASED ON CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing enables the users to make use of the network resources in cost-effective and free
manner in place of traditional architectural model and it also helps to get rid of the effect caused by
failure of single computer equipment like the loss of data, unavailable devices and so on. With the
help of cloud computing, the large number of users need not to buy their own software and
hardware, even need not to bother about that who is providing the service, so that you can focus on
the core services and resources that you really needed. If the cloud-based e-commerce service is
based on the basic application form known as e-commerce cloud .we can describe the overall
picture of infrastructure of the e-commerce cloud, as shown in Figure 2.
Exchange Activity Exchange Activity

Terminal Uses Terminal Uses Terminal Uses

Application Layer Commercial Software

Platform Layer Mass Storage, Parallel Computing, Data Mining

Base Layer Hardware Device, Network Facility, Storage Device

E-Commerce Cloud

Figure 2. A Framework for E-commerce Cloud

8.1 The Base Layer of E-Commerce Cloud

IT infrastructure resources are shared by the base layer of e-commerce cloud and also connects the
various service providers huge system and pool them together to provide services. Cloud computing
allows to access data resource in secure and scalable way and allows to share the hardware resource
and make use of hardware layer to run in the most likely way. A technology called Virtualization is
used to separate the physical hardware from operating system. And it results in one hand that it can
make computation, division of storage capacity of the Existing server into smaller size and then its
re-integration make possible the utilization of IT resources in improved way and provide flexibility
And on other hand it enables large scale cloud computing integration on a common interface and
also enables the publication of calculation. Basic hardware resources for the platform layer can be
provided by base layer and just like ordinary local devices it can also be used by users.

8.2. The Platform Layer of E-Commerce Cloud

The task which had been difficult to complete now with the help of powerful hardware can be
possible to done, like :- task of data storage carried out by platform layer, computation and software
development, task of computation of original mass storage can be achieved, business intelligence
processing possible and so on. Now choosing of devices by the users and on the basis of complexity
of dealing with content the number of devices depends. Strong level of flexibility is possible by
Virtualization technology.

8.3. The Application Layer of E-Commerce Cloud

Professional company of e-commerce provides the application software or services and use the e-
commerce system to pay for getting the benefit of lower cost and remove wastage and make able to
use more resources which help to run the business activities smoothly. Cost is determines on
demand-access

IX. INFLUENCES ON E-COMMERCE BACKEND SERVICE MODE

Cloud computing offers new mode of services which are different from traditional IT services. First of
all, Ecommerce enterprises service by virtue of the cloud platform offers IT resources like software,
hardware, infrastructure and data. Secondly, E-commerce Company is allowed to access the IT
resources just like the utility services on the cloud platform and pay for them for their services.
Through renting system, no firm has required to incur high expenses on purchasing of devices, they
can choose appropriate and suitable devices and pays rent for their services. In short, due to the
emergence of cloud computing ,the concept of traditional IT licensing mode changed and a new
philosophy of services is came into existence which provides the benefit of low cost. Cloud
computing migrates outsourcing into E-commerce is a significant contribution because with the help
of it standardized and uniform service platform can be established by a business which performs as
per customers’ demand. A contract based outsourcing is done in which E-commerce delivers the
backend process that it has to be completed. The close end services which are changed by the
service provider to conduct local technical support is called outsourcing. Reduction of cost,
improving efficiency as well as service quality and improving the core competencies of an
organization are the primary objectives of outsourcing. Cloud computing enables the E-commerce
enterprises to focus on the core businesses and sets them free from the complicated technical
architectural planning, designing and maintenance. Typical example of the new outsourcing based
on cloud computing is virtual business.

X. INFLUENCES ON E-COMMERCE BUSINESS STRATEGIES

Due to expanding era of business towards cloud computing, long term strategies are made by
involving cloud computing by famous e- commerce businesses such as Google, Amazon, Alibaba.
Reasons or forces responsible for migration of cloud computing into e-commerce strategies are:- 1)
As the improved services are given by ecommerce due to rapid information technology like lower
cost benefit, higher efficiency, diversity and more flexibility its demand increases. For instance,
online loan services are offered by the Alibaba, the biggest B2B ecommerce enterprise by virtue of
cloud computing as it helps in credibility evaluation of the customers. 2) As due to emergence of
cloud computing in e-commerce enables to store data in small size and then re-integrate that so
small and medium scale firms can also afford it. 3) High quality architectural facility and quick access
of information lead its demand