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158 Part 1 Introduction

Managing e-business infrastructure

e-business infra- As explained at the start of the chapter, e-business infrastructure comprises the hardware,
structure software, content and data used to deliver e-business services to employees, customers and
The architecture of hard-
ware, software, content partners. In this part of the chapter we look at the management of e-business infrastructure
and data used to deliver by reviewing different perspectives on the infrastructure. These are:
e-business services to
employees, customers 1 Hardware and systems software infrastructure. This refers mainly to the hardware and
and partners.
network infrastructure discussed in the previous sections. It includes the provision of
clients, servers, network services and also systems software such as operating systems and
browsers (Layers II, III and IV in Figure 3.1).
2 Applications infrastructure. This refers to the applications software used to deliver services
to employees, customers and other partners (Layer I in Figure 3.1).
A further perspective is the management of data and content (Layer V in Figure 3.1) which is
reviewed in more detail in the third part of this book.
To illustrate the importance and challenges of maintaining an adequate infrastructure,
Microblogging read the mini case study about the microblogging service Twitter. Twitter is a fascinating
Publishing of short posts case of the challenges of monetizing an online service and delivering adequate services levels
through services such as
Twitter.com and with a limited budget and a small team. This case study shows some of the successes and
Tumblr.com. challenges for the start-up e-business.

Mini Case Study 3.4 The popularity of twittering gives infrastructure challenges

The microblogging service Twitter (Figure 3.16) enables users to post short messages or ‘tweets’ of up to 140
characters by different web services, Instant Messenging (IM) or mobile to keep in touch with ‘followers’
around the world. While Twitter might appear to have similar functionality to IM, each subscriber follows
others and in turn is followed by other users. Its open architecture has also enabled many publishing appli-
cations from the BBC using it to cover breaking news or sports, through US presidential election candidates,
to companies such as Cisco and Woot.com using it to provide product and service information via RSS feeds.
In June 2008, Twitter reported around 3 million monthly web users with others accessing it via mobile
and IM. It is popular throughout Europe as well as the US. In China it has not challenged local services, but
it is popular in Japan.
Twitter doesn’t have a stated revenue model. In an interview (Guardian, 2008b) co-founder Evan Williams
explained that there is sufficient venture capital investment to pay for what Williams called ‘the usual startup
stuff: salaries, servers, rent’ adding ‘there will need to be an income eventually’. He explains that unlike many
services, placing ads is not their preferred revenue method, instead explaining that ‘we are striving for (and
believe we can achieve) a built-in revenue model that is compatible with the open nature of Twitter and its
ecosystem, rather than something tacked-on’. Watch this space …
Twitter was founded in 2006 and by 2008 had developed to a small company of 24 full-time employees
and contractors who manage the service in 6 teams. The make-up of the teams shows the main challenges
of managing an online service:
Product team who define, design and support the Twitter service.
User Experience who create the user experience and create applications, craft the user experiences of
the products, and develop tools that safeguard those experiences.
API (application programming interface) team who develop the software interfaces accessed by other
services such as Twhirl a desktop application enabling users to review and post messages and
Twitterfeed which enables blog postings to be added to Twitter.
Services who develop the main applications and service which form the Twitter functionality.
Operations who architect, deploy, operate, measure and monitor the infrastructure, products and services.