Slide 3.

Chapter 3

E-business infrastructure

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 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.

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.3

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?

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.5

Activity – Internet infrastructure

components
• 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

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.6

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

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.7

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
Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.8

E-Commerce Infrastructure

• Articulate what e-commerce infrastructure

include

• Are there any differences between a large

organization and a small one?

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.1 This model should not be viewed just from layered perspective

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Table 3.1 Key management issues of e-business infrastructure

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Table 3.1 Key management issues of e-business infrastructure (Continued)

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Physical and network infrastructure components of the Internet

Figure 3.2
(Levels IV and III in Figure 3.1)
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Figure 3.3 Example hosting provider Rackspace (www.rackspace.com)

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.4 Timeline of major developments in the use of the web

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.5 The Netcraft index of number of servers

Source: Netcraft web Server Survey. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html. Netcraft

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.16

Case Study Innovation at Google

Read the Google case on pages 115-116

– Answer the questions on page 116

– What is AdWords? How does it work?

– What is AdSense? How does it work?

– How does Google make money?

• http://investor.google.com/fin_data.html

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.17

Intranet and Extranet Applications

What applications can an Intranet support?

What applications can an extranet support?

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.6 Firewall positions within the e-business infrastructure of the B2B company

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.19

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?

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.20

Suggested answers

• Identify benefits
• Involve staff with development
• Find system sponsors, owners and advocates
• Training
• Keep content fresh, relevant and where
possible, fun
• Use e-mail to encourage usage

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.21

Web Technology

• Browser
• Server
• Interactive between a browser and a server
P. 125, Fig. 3.7
• Box.3.2 pp. 126-127 Web Server Log

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.8 Transaction log file example

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.23

Browsershots (www.browsershots.org) – a service for testing cross-

Figure 3.9
browser compatibility
Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.24

Internet Applications
• Atomisation concept
• Widget
• Blogs
• Feeds
• IPTV
• Peer-to-peer
• Social networks
• Tagging
• VOIP
Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.25

Internet Applications
• How are the tools mentioned in the last slide
relevant to e-commerce?

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.11 Personalized feed home page from iGoogle (www.igoogle.com)

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.12 Joost service

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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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
Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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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
Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.30

How does DNS service work?

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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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

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.32

Figure 3.13 The TCP/IP protocol

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.35

Semantic Web

• Interrelated content with defined meaning,

enabling better exchange of information between
computers and between peoples and computers
• Example-Mini Case Study 3.3. pp. 149-151

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.15 Architecture of semantic web system used at Electricite de France

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.38

Internet Governance

Net Neutrality Principle

• What it is
• Should it be upheld?
• What two forces are threatening net
neutrality?
• What’s your opinion on this matter?

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.39

Internet Governance

• Internet Corp. for assigning names and

numbers-http://www.icann.org
• What is the equivalency in Canada?
– http://www.cira.ca/home-en/?lang=en
• Internet Society-www.isoc.org
• Internet Engineering Force—www.ietf.org
• WWW Consortium-www.w3.org

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.40

Open Source vs. Commercial

• Read and discuss p.157 Activity 3.4

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.41

Managing e-business Infrastructure

• What to manage?
• What are the main challenges
• Mini Case Study 3.4 Twitter
– How does twitter make money or not make
money?

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.42

Managing HW/OS Infrastructure

• Client and server machines

• OS
• Networks
• Storage

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.43

Managing I-Services and Hosting

Providers
Key issues
• Connection methods
• Service quality and prices
• Speed of access
– How slow is slow? P.162 box 3.6
• Shared or dedicated hardware and bandwidth
• Availability
• Service level agreement
• Security
Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.44

Managing Application Infrastructures

• This primarily concerns delivering the right

applications to all users of e-business
services

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.45

Figure 3.17 (a) Fragmented applications infrastructure

Source: Adapted from Hasselbring (2000)

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.17 (b) integrated applications infrastructure (Continued)

Source: Adapted from Hasselbring (2000)

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.18 Differing use of applications at levels of management within companies

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.19 Elements of e-business infrastructure that require management

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.49

Web Services, SaaS, and SOA

• Web Services—applications are provided

though internet but not necessarily on the
same machine or the same network
• SaaS—applications are licensed to customers
for use as a service on demand
• What are the challenges for SaaS?

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.50

Web Services, SaaS, and SOA

• What is cloud computing?

• What is virtualization?
– Benefits
– Challenges
– Mini Case Study 3.5, p. 173

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Web Services, SaaS, and SOA

• What is SOA?
• A collection of services that communicate with
each other as part of a distributed system
• The motive is to develop applications that are
independent of hardware, OS, language, etc.
• Case Study 3.2, pp. 174-175

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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Figure 3.20 Google apps (www.google.com/apps)

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Figure 3.21 Salesforce.com (www.salesforce.com)

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
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M-Commerce

• What is m-commerce?

• What are its advantages?

• What are its limits?

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.55

M-Commerce

• Mobile phone Technologies

• Ref. p.178, Table 3.6

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.56

M-Commerce

• Mobile phone Technologies

– Ref. p.178, Table 3.6
• Mobile phone user market
– http://www.cwta.ca/CWTASite/english/index.html
– http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/us-catches-up-with-
western-europe-in-3g-mobile-device-adoption-5908/

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.57

M-Commerce

Popular mobile applications

– Short Message Services (SMS) applications
– Wi-Fi mobile access
– Bluetooth wireless applications
• Technology Convergence
– Access device convergence
– Delivery channel convergence
– Supplier convergence

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.58

M-Commerce

Strategies
• For portal and media sites, they may adopt
embrace early or wait and see
• For B2C e-commerce sites, they may market,
sell, and building the brand

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009
Slide 3.59

Next Class

Preview chapter 4
Read the Econsultancy interview on pages 196-
198 and be prepared to discuss these
questions
– What’s their business model?
– How did they plan to develop their business?
– Do you think they have a good chance to
succeed?
– What can we learn from the interview?

Dave Chaffey, E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 4th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2009