Key Technologies for E-Business

Significant features of e-business and e-commerce are explained below:

1. Ubiquity: They are vvailable just about everywhere and  form  a market space extended beyond traditional boundaries and removed
   from a temporal and geographic location. 
2. Global Reach:They provide  commercial transactions cross-cultural and over  national boundaries.
3. Universal Standards: There exist technical standards of the Internet and, therefore, the technical standards for conducting e-commerce are universal standards 
4. Richness: They deliver rich messages to large numbers of people.
5. Interactivity: E-business technologies are interactive and allow two-way communication between the seller and consumer, and enabling the companies to engage a consumer on a massive, global scale.
6. Information Density: The Internet and the Web vastly increased the information density, in other words  total amount and quality of information available to consumers and seller companies.
7.  Personalization/Customization: E-business and e-commerce technologies permit personalization and targeting specific individuals and segments

 The  features of e-business and e-commerce can be aligned with the main technological concepts as listed below:
Ubiquity: Internet, Mobile Internet, Web and telecom technologies
Global Reach: Internet and protocols,
Universal Standards: HTTP, FTP, TCP/IP, EDI
Richness: Database, Analytics, e-mailing, Web servers, application server
Interactivity: Architecture, Web Server, application server, Web client
Information Density: The Internet and the Web, cloud computing, storage, Big data.
Personalization/Customization: AI (Artificial Intelligence)

A payment gateway is an e-commerce application service.  It enables payment and collection processes in e-businesses, on-line retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar.  Payment routes including credit card, debit card, online banking payments, electronic funds transfer are critical for e-business. 

Analytics are used by the companies to understand customer behaviour and to determine the necessary response actions in their products and services. Analytical tools help companies organize, examine, analyze, report, visualize, and reflect the transactional data and their customers’ actions.

Artificial Intelligence can improve the efficiency of businesses through improving decisionmaking around purchases, and the automation of several tasks, provide critical insights, free-up several working hours behind procurement, and making business purchases intelligent and low cost. It can  improve customer relations and customization by providing predictive patterns to companies.

E-business supporting technologies can bedivided into three categories: 
1. First category includes information display technologies like Web, HTML, XML, and Java.
2. The other category includes information transmission technologies like  EDI, TCP/IP, WAP, WLAN, and Bluetooth
3. Information processing technologies are the last category including technologies such as GPS, GIS, DSS, GDSS, IDSS.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is used by WWW to  publish information for global distribution. It is  a kind of publishing mother tongue that all computers may potentially understand. HTML  gives authors the means to publish online documents with headings, text, tables, lists, photos, etc., and to retrieve online information via hypertext links at the click of a button. 

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) provides the facility whereby files can be downloaded into a computer from another computer on the Internet. There are some other  utilities for file transfer, but most users  employ browsers for this via FTP links.

EDI reduces lead time, saves documentation processing costs, eliminates procurement errors, clarifies inventory status information, and enhances strategic alliances throughout the supply chain. In supply chains, EDI provides electronic integration,  information diffusion and sharing; and 
electronic marketplaces. 

There are several technological trends that effect e-commerce. One of them is the dominance of mobile commerce. E-Wallet technology is another trend.  E-commerce subscription services,  customization of the products, augmented and virtual reality, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR),  upselling and cross-selling that are fueled by personalized product recommendations, CRM integration, actionable content,  Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), social media,  cognitive supply chain management, videos,  gamification, chatbots and   voice search are among the other technologes that shape e-commerce. 

There are 5 layers in e-business infrastructure. These are like the followings: 

1.  Services and applications layer like  CRM, supply chain management, data mining content management systems 

2 . Systems software (operating systems, utility systems) like Web browser and server software and standarts, networking software and database management systems

3.  Network Layer like physical network and transport standarts (TCP/IP)

4. Storage Layer  like permanent magnetic storage on web servers or optical backup or temporary storage in memory (RAM)

5.  Data Layer such as web content for intranet, extranet and internet sites,
customers’ data, transaction data, clickstream data

A typical reference architecture for a modern e-commerce system consists of the followings:
• The browser/user interaction function is performed by a Web client (browser or any device with an internet connection).
• Application servers typically fulfil the business rules and applications function, and transaction servers
perform the business applications.
• Relational databases generally take place in the data services layer.

The web tier has three functions. First one is  accepting/rejecting incoming requests and serving static content.  Second one is  forwarding complex requests to the application server.  Last one is  receiving the response from the
application server and sending a reply back to the client. 

Architectural framework of e-business and advanced e-commerce platform consists of six layers of functionality or services. These include the followings: 
Synthesizing Data Base Management Systems, datarepository, computer languages, software agent-based transactions, monitors or communication protocols to facilitate the integration of data and software for better applications.

E-messaging services and Electronic Data Interchange enable  timely,
access to reliable and complete information at the right time across diverse workgroups. Through data encryption and authentication, secure messaging  layer overcomes the security, privacy, and confidentiality challenges of e- messaging.So its function is to provide the security, privacy and confidentially of the mesasges. 

Security mechanisms are built and designed for several reasons. These are; access control and authentication of identities, data confidentiality and privacy, data integrity and authorized modification assurance, and transaction reliability.

Security systems focus on three sides in e-commerce and e-business. First one is  client security.  The user’s privacy and integrity of information should be protected on the client-side. Second one is server-side security that   protects the webserver. Third one is Communication Channel Security which deals with protecting private or sensitive information in transit from an unauthorized third party.

E-commerce companies can have higher levels of the system and transaction security by doing the followings:

• installing HTTPS protocols rather than a traditional HTTP,
• using multilayer security which includes the firewall together with a CDN (Content Delivery Network), transaction monitoring,
• avoiding the storage of credit/debit card information and
• performing periodic backups.

In mobile commerce system architectures web servers and a wireless application
server are  included to communicate with the mobile user. Moreover, API (Application Programming Interfaces) that support integration by allowing two applications to communicate with each other made mobile app development more functional and integrated with other programming sources. 

There are some challenges for a uniform end-user platform. These are: The heterogeneity of devices, operating systems and network technologies.   For this reason, standardization bodies consisting of telecommunication companies, device manufacturers and value-added service providers integrate their work.