Page 139 - E-Bussiness and E-Commerce Management Strategy, Implementation, and Practice

M03_CHAF9601_04_SE_C03.QXD:D01_CHAF7409_04_SE_C01.QXD 16/4/09 11:09 Page 106

106 Part 1 Introduction

Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome using an operating system such as Microsoft Windows
XP or Apple OS X (Level II in Figure 3.1). This systems software will then request transfer of
the information about the holiday request across a network or transport layer (Level III in
Figure 3.1). The information will then be stored in computer memory (RAM) or in long-
term magnetic storage on a web server (Level IV in Figure 3.1). The information itself which
makes up the web pages or content viewed by the employee and the data about their holiday
request are shown as a separate layer (Level V in Figure 3.1), although it could be argued that
this is the first or second level in an e-business architecture.
Kampas (2000) describes an alternative five-level infrastructure model of what he refers
to as ‘the information system function chain’:
1 Storage/physical. Memory and disk hardware components (equivalent to Level IV in
Figure 3.1).
2 Processing. Computation and logic provided by the processor (processing occurs at Levels
I and II in Figure 3.1).
3 Infrastructure. This refers to the human and external interfaces and also the network,
referred to as ‘extrastructure’. (This is Level III in Figure 3.1, although the human or
external interfaces are not shown there.)
4 Application/content. This is the data processed by the application into information. (This
is Level V in Figure 3.1.)
5 Intelligence. Additional computer-based logic that transforms information to knowledge.
(This is also part of the application layer I in Figure 3.1.)
Each of these elements of infrastructure presents separate management issues which we will
consider separately. In this chapter, infrastructure management issues are introduced, while
more detailed discussion of management solutions is presented in Chapters 10, 11 and 12.
We start our coverage of e-business infrastructure by considering the technical infrastruc-
ture for the Internet, extranets, intranets and the World Wide Web which are Levels II and
III in Figure 3.1.
We then look at how these facilities work by reviewing the standards that are used to
enable electronic communications, including communications standards such as TCP/IP
and EDI and publishing standards such as HTML and XML.
In the second part of the chapter, some management issues of hosting e-business services
are then reviewed, specifically management of Level I applications and services by external
parties and how to manage staff access to the Internet. Finally, we focus on how new access
platforms such as mobile phones and interactive digital TV will change the way the Internet
is used in the future (Level II in Figure 3.1).

We return to some issues of e-business infrastructure management later in this book.
Table 3.1 provides a summary of the main issues facing businesses and where they are cov-
ered in this chapter and later in the book.