CBEC1103 Elements of EC

Topic 6 Electronic Commerce Technology

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Topics covered :

  

Technologies support EC Interactive TV Business and technology drivers that affected EC

Information superhighway

The removal of the barriers between the computing, telecommunications and broadcasting industries has created the foundation for the information superhighway and the wide range of services that it has the potential to support. Existing networks, including the Internet, already provide:  business services;  teleworking opportunities;  business to consumer EC services including entertainment, home banking and home shopping;  health services such as remote consultation and the exchange of information between hospitals (telemedicine); and  local government services such as education (e.g. distance learning) and leisure services (e.g. sports facilities booking).

Internet


The Internet has provided protocols for a common networking infrastructure that can be used for everything from serving Web pages to retrieving e-mail to running client-server applications across virtually all types of client-server platform. HTML, closely followed by Java, has become a mechanism for standard universal electronic communications, while also serving as a standard user interface.

EDI

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the term used for the exchange of structured data between the computer systems of trading partners. It is frequently used as an electronic replacement for traditional trading documents such as orders and invoices. EDI can be defined as the transfer of structured trade data, by agreed message standards, from one computer system to another, by electronic means. The phrase structured trade data brings to mind commonplace business documentation such as invoices, credit notes, purchase orders, packing lists, acknowledgments of order, etc. The phrase by agreed message standards implies that discrepancies between message structures will be prevented by providing a fixed & agreed method of specifying & presenting the data. The phrase, from one computer system to another. EDI is between the computer systems of different organizations. However EDI is also often used for intra-company & inter-company communications.

Groupware

According to Laudon & Laudon (2004), Groupware provides functions and services to support collaborative activities of work groups. Groupware includes software for group writing & commenting, informationsharing, electronic meetings, scheduling, and e-mail and a network to connect the members of the group as they work on their own desktop computers, often in widely scattering locations. Colemans list is very broad. Therefore, the following groupware categories:  Electronic meeting systems  Document and workflow management systems  Proprietary groupware frameworks  Intranets: utilizing Internet technology to support workgroups  Extranets: Linking together the intranets of business partners.

Electronic meeting systems

one-to-one messaging facilities (such as telephone and voice mail, fax, and e-mail) workgroup communication technologies can provide manyto many communication facilities. These technologies are already radically changing the ways in which business people, in different locations, communicate. They are:  video conferencing  data conferencing and electronic meeting software. Video conferencing  allows real time communication between geographically remote groups of participants, and  saves travel time & costs associated with face to face meetings.  The costs of PC-based desktop data & video conferencing systems are lower than studio-type video conferencing facilities. However, the motion video quality of the PC-based systems, which use ordinary PSTN lines, is inferior due to the limited bandwidth of the lines.

Electronic meeting systems

 

Data conferencing and electronic meeting software Non-real time: data conferencing can be regarded as non-real time. Email bulletin board systems (BBS) are an example, as is a Lotus Notes discussion database. BBSs allow multiple users to carry on a discussion over time and are accessible to all the e-mail systems users. They have been used for quite a long time by IT departments for dealing with technical support requests from end-users.  The BBS concept has been adapted by groupware packages, such as the Lotus Notes discussion databases, to provide BBS facilities where access can be restricted to specific workgroups & members. Real time data conferencing and electronic meeting software: real time data conferencing software allows two or more people at remote locations to edit & modify electronic data simultaneously.  Desktop data conferencing systems are combined with low cost video conferencing software & pen cameras. They enable a small video image of 1 or more of the participants to be displayed in a panel on the screen of PC at the same time as the document that is being worked on.

Document and workflow management systems

In any office, much information is stored in a way that does not allow easy representation in the form of a computer record.  Examples include letters & documents from outside organizations; photographs and design drawings; books, manuals, articles and handwritten notes. These are all useful data, but they are not easily stored on structured computer files. Document imaging and workflow management systems uses IT to tackle this problem. They address the problem of indexing, filing, retrieving, and managing the flow & subsequent processing of document images. benefits of saving document storage space, such systems can be used to re-engineer business processes so that they require fewer clerical and professional steps and thus improve the effectiveness of the overall business process.

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Document and workflow management systems

Workflow management software automatically records the progress and completion status of each job as it progresses through the system. These details can be analyzed so that the human supervisor knows which tasks are outstanding and for what reason, how long individual operators spend on different types of tasks etc., so that the overall workflow can be controlled and managed.  Further analysis of this data, collected by the system, can also be used to continually modify and fine-tune the workflow to maintain optimum effectiveness. The workflow management software often has a graphical user interface (GUI) so that the supervisors can easily redraw the routes that particular documents should take through the organization; who is authorized to work on the documents; what activities need to be included in the work; what checking needs to be done and by whom; and what status conditions the system should monitor.

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Proprietary groupware framework

These can be compared with office suites (e.g. MS Office) in that they both bundle their component technologies into an integrated package with a GUI that is common to all the individual component applications. They are also designed so that sharing & transfer of data between the different applications, & groupware between workgroup members, are achieved easily. However, office suites are normally restricted to operating under a particular type of operating system (OS) & a particular computer platform. For example, MS Office will only run under MS Windows on an IBM PC compatible; it will not run on, say, the Unix OS on a Sun workstation. Lotus Notes (Lotus/IBM), other contemporary products that fit into this proprietary groupware framework category include:  Microsoft Exchange (Microsoft), GroupWise (Novell),  TeamOffice (ICL/Fujitsu), OpenDoc (Apple/IBM) Groupware framework packages provide the users with a number of predefined applications templates that can immediately be used as is or customized to meet a particular workgroups requirements.

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Intranets: utilizing Internet technology to support workgroups

The original purpose of the Internet, when it was originally funded and controlled by the US Department of Defense and the Pentagon in the 1970s, was to support and foster collaboration among geographically dispersed teams of scientists working on military research projects. Similarly, the World Wide Web (WWW), or more specifically the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) upon which the WWW is founded, was originally developed by CERN to enable researchers around the world to share each others work more easily. An intranet is a private corporate network that utilizes Internet software technology. This approach provides the ease of use of WWW & help to overcome the security problem. Intranets provide the benefits of the open standards established on the Internet, while providing the security and manageability necessary to be acceptable to business. The Intranets private internal web servers are distributed to users across a LAN or via a virtual private network that utilizes open Internet protocols & software technology. Intranets are usually protected by firewall technology, a mechanism to provide access security by intercepting incoming network traffic, &allowing only those who are authorized through.

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Intranets: utilizing Internet technology to support workgroups

Groupware can offer communications, collaborative working & business process reengineering (BPR) tools that help organizations respond to current business challenges. Future trends in groupware will include the increasing use of intelligent agents and knowledge architectures in groupware products.  Intelligent agents can be small smart programs that can be tailored to an individuals, or groups requirement. They carry out specific, repetitive and predictable tasks such as searching for e-mail that contains specific key words and deleting junk email, scheduling appointments, sending automatic reminders to colleagues etc.  Knowledge architectures aim to map the workflows to the knowledge they contain which is in turn mapped to what is required to meet the organizations overall goals and strategy.  Main purposes of the architecture is to allow the organization to leverage the organizational knowledge that is spread throughout its groupware and other applications.

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Extranets: Linking together the intranets of business partners

When an organization develops applications based on open Internet application protocols and network protocols, it enables them to simplify and enhance their electronic communications with business partners, suppliers, & customers. The interconnection of different organizations private Intranets are now referred to as Extranets. There are 2 major problems : when creating an Extranet, or any form of connection from a private network to an outside network.  The first is security. This is now being addressed by firewalls (for maintaining access security) and the implementation of Internet encryption & the use of digital certificates technology.  The second is the issue of open standards. Many such standards are now widely accepted and are used almost universally. Examples: TCP/IP & HTML .There are also many other newer technologies, that have not yet been universally accepted as standards, e.g. Microsoft prefers its own ActiveX technology over Java, JavaScript, & Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). These newer technologies enable platform-independent software development, creation & deployment of distributed objects.

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Interactive TV (iTV)

iTV network operators are already offering Internet access over their iTV communication networks at speeds of between 20 & 50 times and at charge rates that are only marginally higher than conventional ISPs. iTV is television that is under the control of the viewer as opposed to the broadcaster. It lets users to watch programs when they want to watch, rather than when the broadcaster decides to broadcast them. Full interactive TV provides the user with the functionality of a super VCR, except that the movies or programs are downloaded, over a network from a remote video server. Video On Demand (NEC 1998) provides the following list of types of iTV:  Broadcast (No-VoD) services similar to broadcast TV, in which the user is a passive participant and has no control over the session.

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Interactive TV (iTV)

Video On Demand provides the following list of types of iTV:  Pay-per-view (PPV) services in which the user signs up and pays for specific programming, similar to existing CATV PPV services.  Quasi video on demand (Q-VoD) services in which users are grouped based on a threshold of interest. Users can perform at the simplest level temporal control activities by switching to a different group.  Near video on demand (N-VoD) services in which functions like forward and reverse are simulated by transitions in discrete time intervals (typically 5 mins). This capability can be provided by multiple channels with the same programming skewed in time.  True video on demand (T -VoD) services in which the user has complete control over the session presentation. The user has full function VCR (virtual VCR) capabilities, include forward & reverse play, freeze and random positioning. T-VoD needs only a single channel per customer, multiple channels become redundant.

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Example

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What Can True Vod (T-Vod) Be Used For?

 

T-VoD allows viewers to watch videos with full VCR control. The iTV standards and equipment (include video server, network, & set-top boxes) can also provide the communications infrastructure that allows a whole host of newer information based services to be delivered economically to the home. Video On Demand (NEC 1998) provides the following list of potential TVoD applications. Movies on demand: User can select & play movies with full VCR capabilities. Distance learning: Users subscribe to courses held at remote sites. Catalogue browsing: User can examine and purchase commercial items & services. Electronic commerce: Users can view video clips of tourist attractions, shows etc. and book tickets.

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What Can True Vod (T-Vod) Be Used For?

Interactive video games: User plays downloadable and interactive games without having to own a physical copy. Interactive news services: A combination of live news, business news broadcasts and stored video data can be tailored to the users requirements with interactive selection and retrieval. Educational services: College and university users can access movies, video clips and interactive learning packages. Students can record and distribute video images for study and research purposes. Virtual museums etc.: Video clips can be delivered to interactive multimedia kiosks for information and educational purposes in museums and galleries.

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What Technological Developments Have Led to the Introduction of ITV?

Many different technological advances have combined to create the environment for iTV. These advances include the following:  Advances in digital electronics have made it possible to build MPEG (Motion Picture Expert Group) decoders on a single chip and well within the costs needed by consumer products.  Asynchronous digital subscriber loop has enabled the delivery of a single 2 Mbit/s MPEG encoded video channel over a standard twisted pair copper local loop.  PCs have brought down the cost of computing power significantly to enable it to be built into set-top boxes economically.  WWW browsers and GUIs have advanced sufficiently to enable variants to be built into consumer products.  Developments in video server technology now allow them to support tens of thousands of customers from a single server.  Consumers are prepared to pay for new technology: sales of multimedia PCs, cable and satellite TV services, video games, etc. are evidence of this.  Major corporations in the computer, content, network and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have been committed to upgrading plant and equipment to handle new video services for several years.

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The Architecture of an Itv System

(a) Effect of Method of Delivery to the Home  The architecture of an interactive TV system is highly dependent on the nature of delivery to the home. A cable company will utilize its coaxial tree & branch system. Cable networks usually have sufficient bandwidth to provide both backward compatible analogue services & the delivery of new digital telephony, data, and video services.  Established telcos,which invested in their local copper wire networks, the use of ADSL technology. ADSL allows sufficient bandwidth (2- 5M bps) for the delivery of a single digital MPEG-encoded video stream to the home, while allowing telephone calls to take place at the same time as watching a film. The ADSL technology, from the telcos viewpoint, is that it allows the existing copper telephone cabling that is in the consumers home & connects the consumers home to the local telephone exchange, provide this high bandwidth service.  The use of coaxial cable for iTV has the benefit of maintaining compatibility with existing cable TV analogue set top boxes while enabling customers to upgrade to digital services when they so wish. This ability is based on extending the bandwidth of current analogue coax standards.

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The Architecture of an Itv System

(b) PCCWIMS (ADSL) iTV System Architecture  PCCW Interactive Multimedia Services Ltd. (PCCWIMS) introduced the worlds first mass market iTV service in 1998, using ADSL for local loop delivery to the subscribers homes. Figure 6.1 shows the overall architecture of the system developed by PCCWIMS. iTV launch functional diagram
Figure 6.1: PCCWIMS iTV service system architecture PCCWIMS (1998)

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The Architecture of an Itv System

(c) Subscriber-end Components of the iTV Architecture  Figure 6.2 shows the equipment that is located in the home, the most important of which is the set top box (STB).  Figure 6.2: Consumer-end VoD equipment Gare C (1994)

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The Architecture of an Itv System

(d) Set Top Boxes (STB)  The STB has three main components: the ADSL modem, MPEG decoder, and GUI browser software. The ADSL data stream arriving from the exchange (which uses a real bandwidth of around 250 KHz) is demodulated into a 2 Mbit/s MPEG data stream by the ADSL modem. The MPEG decoder then converts the 2 Mbit/s data back into analogue video that is then delivered to the domestic TV. (e) Optical Network Units (ONU)  These are installed in the newer apartment blocks that are directly linked to Hongkong Telecoms fibre network. The ONU terminates the optical signal, that enters the building via the fibre network, and converts it to an electrical ADSL signal that is then distributed to apartments in the block via the metallic pair telephone cables that are already installed.

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The Architecture of an Itv System

(f) Making a VoD Connection in the Home  When subscribers wish to connect to the VoD service, they dial a special number at the local exchange. This connects them to an interactive voice response (IVR) system that welcomes them to the service and asks for their service PIN code. Once the customers code has been verified using the intelligent networks (IN) service control points (SCP) database, the SCP sets up a permanent 2 Mbit/s video connection between one port of the central video server & the ADSL modem connected to the customers local copper loop. Once this connection is made, the server transmits the services menu screens over the network to the customers TV. (g) The Network  The VoD network capable of delivering a data stream of at least 2 Mbps into the home. The reason for this is that full TV quality full screen digital video, even when compressed, requires a data transfer rate of about 5 Mbits/s. It uses the relatively new, but now fairly well established, highspeed Asynchronous Tranfer Mode (ATM) packet switching technology at the datalink, network, and transport layers of the network.

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The Architecture of an Itv System

(h) Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Lines (ADSL)  This technology provides a means of using existing copper cabling for transmitting high bandwidth data streams, albeit over fairly short distances. There are a two other technologies, very similar to ADSL, that have been developed for the same purpose. Collectively these are referred to as xDSL. The other two technologies are High-speed Digital Subscriber Lines (HDSL) & Very high-speed Digital Subscriber Lines (VDSL). (i) Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)  SONET is now an ISO standard for optical transmission over fibre networks in the Mbps & Gbps transmission speed ranges. SONET standard transmission speeds range from 52Mbps at optical carrier level 1 to 10Gbps at OC-192. (j) ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode)  This is a new technology intended for very high-speed data transfer and switching. Speeds of 155 Mb/sec to 2.4 gigabits/sec. are possible using ATM over fibre optic media. It is capable of handling real-time voice and video traffic, as well as data. It is sometimes referred to as BISDN.

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The Server

Importance, Function and Alternative Architectures  The digital media centre, video server, control server, and other applications servers can be regarded as the master server. The master server has to be located centrally in the network because it would need to house a massive and highly resilient database, particularly the video database. The master server is not itself directly connected to the user but would act as a central repository for storing films and other material.  One of the key components of the master server is the video and/or media server. This has to store a vast number of individual films & each film will require a minimum of 1.5GB to 5GB, even when MPEG2 encoded.  There are currently two solutions to this problem. 1 is to use a large number of very fast PCs on a very fast (ATM) network and the other is to use massively parallel processor (MPP) technology in conjunction with a very large database. The latter is the approach favoured by nCube & Oracle. This approach came from a partnership between Oracle and nCube, based on a combination of nCUBEs massively parallel processor (MPP) & Oracles database.

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The server

 

The nCube Server The purpose of an iTV service to be able to provide subscribers with what they want, whenever they want it. Therefore, a video server needs to be able to provide tens of thousands of customers with individually controlled video streams. For VoD, this means that many separate parts of a single video, stored on a hard disk, may need to be accessed at the same time if many individual subscribers wanted to view different parts of the film at the same time. The nCube solution to this problem is a combination of the use of MPP computers & RAID disk technology. MPP Technology: an MPP computer has an array of individual computing elements that are interconnected. These nodes communicate with each other either directly/indirectly via another node & pass messages & data to each other. A node can be a processor, an input/output port, or an SCSI disk chain. A processor node consists of a custom-designed RISC engine with either 32 / 64 Mbyte of RAM. RAID Technology: Oracles video server use of RAID rotating disk technology. Rather than using a single and very expensive multiple platter disk, RAID-based systems uses an array of low-cost SCSI disks as used on PCs. With RAID level-2 (up to RAID-5), a variety of disk mirroring techniques is used to provide a high degree of reliability & availability. Mirroring means that there are duplicate copies of files on different disks; if a disk fails, it can be physically replaced & the second copy of the data copied back onto the new disk automatically by the OS.

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Technical Sspecifications of nCUBEs Streaming Media Appliance

The following extracts obtained from nCUBEs web sites outlines the functionality, capacity & performance of nCUBEs current streaming Media Appliance n4. VOD System Overview - nCUBEs core VOD platform includes the n4 Streaming Media Appliance and the nABLE system management application. Using standard APIs, the nCUBE platform easily integrates with ODA applications, giving operators flexibility in their choice of subscriber experience. nCUBE n4 - n4 Streaming Media Appliance is nCUBEs 3rd generation streaming media system & 4th generation supercomputer. Based on a hypercube architecture, n4 is an application-specific appliance specially engineered to perform massively parallel I/O streaming operations. nABLE System Management Application - nCUBEs VOD management application, nABLE, coordinates & integrates all systems & operations in the VOD solution architecture. The nABLE application is built upon a multithreaded, object oriented JAVA software architecture. nABLE consists of 2 server applications:  nABLE Headquarters (HQ) & nABLE Realtime (RT)

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Business and technology drivers that affected EC

Business Drivers  Laudon and Laudon (1996) identify a number of important changes that have occurred that are affecting todays organizations. These included the following:  Globalization
  

(Problems of) Management and control in a global marketplace Competition in world markets Global work groups & Global delivery systems (The rapid shift toward) Knowledge- and information-based economies (The need for increased) Productivity (The need to rapidly introduce)New products and services (The need for changes in styles of) Leadership (Increases in) Time-based competition Shorter product life Turbulent environment & Limited employee knowledge base

Transformation of Industrial Economies

      

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Business and technology drivers that affected EC

Transformation of the Enterprise  Flattening (the organization structure)  Decentralization  (The need for increased) Flexibility  Location independence  Low transaction and coordination costs  Empowerment (of junior and middle level employees)  Collaborative work and teamwork These important business drivers Figure 6.3 : Organizational responses to have significantly changed the contemporary business drivers nature and focus of business strategy and business processes.

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Business and technology drivers that affected EC

 

Internal Integration: Improving Internal Organizational Effectiveness Many of the EC technologies, that have been introduced to in the earlier section on Emerging technologies leading to EC, are being used to improve the internal integration and effectiveness of organizations. Usually, the implementation of these technologies has to be accompanied by some form of business process reengineering in order for their potential benefits to be realized. The established EDI technology provides a good example. EDI can improve internal organizational effectiveness by:  the simplification of the internal systems by the elimination or automation of labour intensive and error prone manual operations;  integrating supporting technologies and systems to improve the links between internal functions (e.g. making it uneccessary to have to key in hardcopy transactions received from business parners & allow all internal departments to have access to shared electronic documents).

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Business and technology drivers that affected EC

 

External Integration: Improving the Links in the Supply Chain Improving the links in the supply chain and its overall effectiveness is the major strategic benefit of EC technologies such as Extranets and EDI. Since the 1990s, the situation has changed. Manufacturers use JIT manufacturing methods, keep very small component inventories, and rely upon JIT supply. Consistent quality, availability, and timeliness of delivery are now far more important than just buying price. Total quality is now required, and expected, along all links in the supply chain. Consequently, manufacturers now rely upon a much smaller number of suppliers and have a more open and trusting relationship with them. The relationship between supplier and buyer now has to be a long-term partnership, as opposed a short-term getrich-quick opportunity accompanied by mutual distrust. Consequently, the cost & effectiveness of customer & supplier communications is now of paramount importance. Extranets and EDI provide a means of providing major improvements in the linking processes between trading partners. These process improvements can help in developing openness and trust, allow the earlier involvement of suppliers in their customers activities and development plans, and foster better long-term & dependable relationships.

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Business and technology drivers that affected EC

 

Improving Customer Interaction & Micro-Marketing Kalakota & Whinston state that Companies also employ electronic commerce to provide marketing channels, to target microsegments or small audiences, and to improve post-sales customer satisfaction by creating new channels of customer service and support. Improving customer interaction: Dell Computers use of the Internet to conduct business to consumer EC provides a very good example of this. It also demonstrates how EC can be used to substantially reduce a manufacturers marketing, operating, & distribution costs! Micromarketing: refers to the practice of targeting very small specialized markets to receive detailed product information that is particularly relevant to the micromarkets specific needs. In its ultimate form the micromarket can be a single individual. Conventional marketing and advertising, such as TV and newspaper advertising, is usually aimed at very large and very broad market segments.

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Business and technology drivers that affected EC

Technology Drivers (a) The Improved Cost-effectiveness of Digital Components Due to Improvements in VLSI  The continuing advances in very large scale integration (VLSI) technology have dramatically improved the capacity and performance of, and reduced the cost and size of, microelectronic components (b) The Emergence and Adoption of Open Standards  EC relies upon data communications and the interconnection of trading partners computer systems. This has been made possible by the emergence, & industry adoption, of a whole range of standards. Clearly, connectivity is not possible unless the devices and software to be connected have common interfaces. Some of the more important standards include:  ISO OSI reference model (7-layer data communications protocols)  TCP/IP (Internet network & transport layer protocol) & HTTP (WWW protocol)  Others include EDI messaging standards (EDIFACT in particular), MPEG motion video encoding and decoding standards, and open operating system standards (UNIX).

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Business and technology drivers that affected EC

Deregulation of the Telecommunications Industry and Advances in Data Communications Technology Deregulation: refers to the changes in the ownership, control, and marketing of telecommunications services that have been taking place globally since the mid-1980s. Deregulation has brought about much needed competition in the industry and widened the market for new telecommunications technologies, devices and services. It has resulted in cheaper and better quality voice and data transmission services, cellular telephone services, and private satellite services, and many other advances that benefit business and the private consumer in general and EC in particular.

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