1. Define E-business and differentiate between E-business and E-communication.

Commerce, the exchange of valuable goods or services, has been conducted for thousands of years. Traditionally, commerce involved bringing traders, buyers, and sellers together in a physical marketplace to exchange information, products, services, and payments. Today, many business transactions occur across a telecommunications network where buyers, sellers, and others involved in the business transaction (such as the employees who process transactions) rarely see or know each other and may be anywhere in the world. This process of buying and selling of products and services across a telecommunications network is often called electronic commerce or e-commerce. Many people use the term e-commerce in a broader sense: to encompass not only the buying and selling of goods, but also the delivery of information, the providing of customer service before and after a sale, the collaboration with business partners, and the effort to enhance productivity within organizations. Others refer to this broader spectrum of business activities that can be conducted over the Internet as e-business. Most people today use the terms e-commerce (in its broadest sense) and e-business interchangeably. In this book, we use the term e-business to indicate the widest spectrum of business activities that use Internet and Web technologies.

E-Business Advantages and Disadvantages : Like buyers, sellers also benefit tremendously from the global e-business-based economy. Sellers can increase sales and operations from local to worldwide markets, improve internal efficiency and productivity, enhance customer service, and increase communication with both suppliers and customers. Table 1-2 illustrates some e-business advantages for sellers and buyers.

2. Explain Porters generic value chain. E-Business Value Chains The widespread access to the Internet and the Web by suppliers and customers has encouraged many companies to reevaluate their value chains. In his book, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, Michael E. Porter of the Harvard Business School first introduced the concept of a value chain. A companys value chain consists of all the primary and support activities, called value activities, performed to create and distribute its goods and services.11 Primary activities include all the activities necessary to produce, sell, and support the companys products. Support activities include purchasing, human resources, technology, and other functions necessary to support the primary activities. At each link in an e-businesss value chain, Internet and Web technologies improve communications and transaction speed. Figure 1-11 illustrates a generic value chain.

Value chains are also used to represent the value activities of any transaction starting with a product or service and ending with a customer. Internet and Web access is redefining the relationships among manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and customers. Increasingly, a companys value chains can be seen as value networks of the multiple relationships the company depends on to produce and sell its products and services (Figure 1-12).

3. Define EDI and advantages of EDI . The initial development of e-business transactions began more than thirty years ago when banks began transferring money to each other by using electronic funds transfer (EFT), and when large companies began sharing transaction information with their suppliers and customers via electronic data interchange (EDI). Using EDI, companies electronically exchange information that used to be traditionally submitted on paper forms, such as invoices, purchase orders, quotes, and bills of lading. This exchange occurs both with suppliers and customers (often called trading partners). These transmissions generally occur over private telecommunications networks called value-added networks, or VANs. Because of the expense of setting up and maintaining these private networks and the costs associated with creating a standard interface between companies, implementing EDI has usually been beyond the financial reach of small and medium-sized companies. Today, companies of all sizes use a less expensive network alternative to VANs for the exchange of information, products, services, and paymentsthe Internet. Global access to the Internet and the Web has changed the way people and businesses around the world communicate.

Advantages :1. Shortened the ordering time 3. Elimination of error 5. Accurate invoincing and payments 7. Speedup cash flow 2. Cost cutting 4. Fast response 6. Reduced stock holding 8. Customer lock in

4. Write a note on i. E business Models :

A companys business model is the way in which the company conducts business in order to generate revenue. Widespread access to the Internet and the Web is driving companies to adapt old business models and create new ones. Although there are many different ways to categorize e-business models, they can be broadly categorized as businesstoconsumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), business-to-government (B2G), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and consumer-to-business (C2B). Table 1-4 describes the general features of these e-business models and provides examples of e-businesses that follow them.

Consumers are increasingly going online to shop for and purchase products, arrange financing, prepare shipment and delivery of digital products such as software, and get service after the sale. Business-to-consumer, or B2C, e-business includes retail sales, often called e-retail, of goods and services, as well as online purchases of items such as airline tickets, entertainment venue tickets, hotel rooms, and shares of stock. Businesses that conduct their transactions from a physical location are sometimes known as brick-and-mortar enterprises. Many traditional brick-and-mortar retailersfrom nationwide companies such as Sears, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, and the Gap, to regional or local stores such as The Sunglass Cityare now e-retailers who maintain online stores at which their customers can also view merchandise and make purchases. Companies such as these, which combine brick-and-mortar business facilities with e-business operations, are sometimes called brick-and-click companies.

Some B2C e-businesses provide high-value content for a subscription fee. Examples of e-businesses following a subscription model such as this include the Wall Street Journal Online (for financial news and articles), Consumer Reports (for product reviews and evaluations), and eDiets.com (for nutritional counseling).

Business-to-Business (B2B) Like B2C e-business models, business-to-business, or B2B, e-business models take a variety of forms. There are basic B2B Internet storefronts, such as Staples and Office Depot, which provide business customers with purchasing, order fulfillment, and other customized services. Some B2B e-businesses offer Internet and Web products such as Web site hosting and Web page design, networking hardware and software, or e-business consulting services. Another B2B model is an online trading community that acts as a central source of information for a vertical market. A vertical market is a specific industry in which similar products or services are developed and sold using similar methods. Examples of broad vertical markets include insurance, real estate, banking, heavy manufacturing, and transportation. The information available at online trading community Web sites includes buyers guides, supplier and product directories, industry news and articles, schedules for industry trade shows and events, and classified ads. MediSpeciality.com (healthcare industry), Hotel Resource (hospitality industry), and Elance (IT industry) are examples of B2B e-businesses that support vertical markets. Figure 1-17 shows a B2B Web site. In addition to supporting vertical markets, Elance also serves as a B2B exchange. B2B exchanges are e-businesses that bring multiple buyers and sellers together in a virtual centralized marketplace, sometimes called a marketspace. B2B exchanges may aggregate information from multiple sellers, allow participants to post buy or sell opportunities on an electronic bulletin board, provide auction services that enable multiple buyers or sellers to enter competitive bids on contracts, or provide access to expert information for a specific field.

Business-to-Government (B2G) A variation on the B2B model is the business-to-government, or B2G, model. These e-businesses create a marketspace for sellers wanting do business with government agencies. B2G e-businesses provide information on government contracting and bring suppliers and government agencies together. E-businesses, such as Bidmain and B2GMarkets, follow the B2G e-business model. Figure 1-22 illustrates a B2G Web site. Now that youve become familiar with how B2C, B2B, and B2G e-businesses interact with individual consumers and other businesses, you can examine another type of business activity fostered by the growth of the Internet and Web access, one in which consumers interact directly with other consumers to buy, sell, and trade items, personal services, and information. Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) In the consumer-to-consumer, or C2C, e-business model, consumers sell products, personal services, and expertise directly to other consumers through a number of methods: by placing online classified ads, by participating in forward and reverse auctions, or by making trades. Examples of e-businesses that involve consumers selling directly to consumers are American Boat Listing, an online boat listing servive; eBay, which offers both fixed price items and auctions; TraderOnline.com, which hosts classified ads; and AllExperts.com, an expert information exchange.

Consumer-to-Business (C2B) Like the B2B reverse auction model, the consumer-to-business, or C2B, e-business model uses reverse auctions to enable consumers to name their own price for a specific good or service; once the bid is offered and accepted, it is often binding. An e-business following the C2B model collects an individual consumers bid for a product or service, such as an airline ticket, rental car, or hotel room, and then offers the bid to multiple competing sellers who either accept or decline the consumers bid. The most well-known e-business following the C2B e-business model is priceline.com (Figure 1-27).

In addition to broad categories such as B2B and B2C, there are various subcategories of e-business models. Many of these subcategories were created by organizations such as government agencies, non-profit institutions, and social or religious groups that decided to reduce their operating expenses and improve customer service by adapting e-business models to their specific needs. National Public Radio is an example of a non-profit institution following an e-business model.

ii.

Internet and Internet components :

To understand the Internet, you must first become familiar with computer networks. A computer network is a group of two or more computers linked by cables, telephone lines, or other wired or wireless media (Figure 1-1). A network of linked computers usually includes special computers called servers that give users access to shared resources such as electronic files, programs, printers, and connections to other networks, such as the Internet. The Internet is a worldwide public network that connects private networks (Figure 1-2).

To connect to the Internet, individuals and businesses generally use some type of physical communications media, such as a network cable, phone line, or, as is increasingly true these days, wireless media. In addition to some form of media, individuals and small-tomedium sized businesses seeking access to the Internet usually need the services of an Internet service provider (ISP)an e-business that provides access to the Internet for a fee. Examples of ISPs include America Online, Netscape Network, EarthLink, NetZero, and Road Runner. Large businesses, colleges, universities, and government institutions may have a computer network that is connected directly to the Internet. Figure 1-3 illustrates an example of an ISP.

5. Explain VADS (Value Added Data Services) A value-added service (VAS) is a popular as a telecommunications industry term for non-core services, or in short, all services beyond standard voice calls and fax transmissions. However, it can be used in any service industry, for services available at little or no cost, to promote their primary business. In the telecommunication industry, on a conceptual level, value-added services add value to the standard service offering, spurring the subscriber to use their phone more and allowing the operator to drive up their ARPU. For mobile phones, while technologies like SMS, MMS anddata access were historically usually considered value-added services, but in recent years SMS, MMS and data access have more and more become core services, and VAS therefore has beginning to exclude those services. A distinction may also be made between standard (peer-to-peer) content and premium-charged content. These are called mobile value-added services (MVAS) which are often simply referred as VAS. Value-added services are supplied either in-house by the mobile network operator themselves or by a third-party value-added service provider (VASP), also known as a content provider (CP)such as All News or Reuters. VASPs typically connect to the operator using protocols like Short message peer-to-peer protocol (SMPP), connecting either directly to the short message service centre (SMSC) or, increasingly, to a messaging gateway that gives the operator better control of the content