Tutorial

Finding Your Way Around E-commerce

By Dr. Dennis P. Geller of 

Breaking into E-commerce can have you going in circles. That's not necessarily bad - you may not be sure where you are or where you're going, but there's a limit to how lost you can get. Even so, it's natural to want to get your bearings: E-commerce can be a dizzying ride. One report predicts that online sales in just one niche market will soon reach $3.5 billion. Another says that E-commerce will save businesses trillions in just a few years. Pretty exciting stuff, and everyone in the company wants a piece of it. But in the small print those same pundits suggest that the costs of building an E-commerce site top a million dollars, that most projects end up late, and that nobody really has a clue how to measure ROI. Would the best thing be to circle the wagons and start shooting?

As always, the way to get around the uncertainties is to have a map. Some maps are very precise, which is great when you can get one, but when trudging through uncharted territory its enough to know the major landmarks and where they lie in relation to each other. Any topographic information is a real plus.

This map is a guide to the E-commerce space. Partitioned into three concentric circles, it can both prepare you for your trip and keep you from bumping into the bigger obstacles.

The Inner Circle

The Inner Circle (banish any thoughts of Dante) represents the basic infrastructure - both hardware and software - that's needed to get started in just about any form of E-commerce. You start walking counterclockwise from the place called IT/Networking. Even without specific web experience the knowledge already in this department will be the foundation for everything else. You'll want to cover all of the bases to get out of this circle: Note, by the way, that in this ring there are many opportunities for outsourcing.

• Routers: You already have routers for your network, but there are special models (and considerations) in web space.

• Firewalls: Depending on the kinds of web usage and applications, a router may not provide all the security you need. A firewall - technically a software product but typically running on its own small server -can offer greater security and flexibility.

• Servers: The riskiest thing about choosing a server is that you won't be able to get a reliable prediction for the load it's going to carry. What you can be sure of is that once an E-commerce site goes up, any little glitch is going to cause palpitations in the executive suite. So you need to look at fault-tolerant or redundant hardware solutions.

• Mail Servers: A mail server is software, and you probably have one already for corporate e-mail. But E-commerce can inflate both the magnitude of e-mail and the functionality needed from the server, so it's not safe to assume that the solution you have will stand up to the job. Long-term performance considerations may dictate that this live on its own server, but that's a decision that may not be required at the start. Fax serving may also be a consideration, especially in a B2B web site.

• Storage Systems: Again, the requirements of reliability and continual uptime may cause you to investigate different models from the ones you're used to.

• Web Servers: This is the software that serves the web content to the user's browser. Unfortunately, while the major players all have about the same functionality, this will prove to be a religious decision (Netscape vs. Microsoft, open vs. proprietary, & ) that is going to involve IT staff, programmers, and web designers. These battles actually started up above when you picked the server hardware, didn't they? Note, by the way, that you'll see vendor offerings for "Commerce Servers." These are webservers enhanced with support for certain commerce activities. Use them out of the box or as toolkits for custom solutions, especially where a one-vendor solution makes sense.

• Databases: Another area where there is certainly core competency in the IT/Networking department, databases can present special challenges in a few ways. While the OLTP model is important, many websites require that information be sliced, diced and extracted in ways that don't easily fit the relational model. Also, the rate at which they are hit can exceed what you've seen in traditional IT applications.

• Backup: Even something as basic as backup (and recovery!) has its own web spin. The well known problems at E-Bay highlight the need for redundancy at all levels, but unlike more traditional IT approaches, there is no overnight window for periodic backup, and delays of hours in reloading a database won't be tolerated. ("Dammit, Scottie, I need warp drive now!" "Aye, Captain, I'll do me best.") Meeting business needs here requires a combination of software, hardware and network approaches.

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The Author

Dennis P. Geller, Ph.D is a Research Director with TechnologyEvaluation.COM's E-Commerce Practice. Dr. Geller's research activities span all of electronic commerce. Previously, he worked as the Senior Manager of Cahners Business Information's Electronic Media group. At Cahners, he was responsible for adapting and integrating web technologies to serve as platform components for all corporate websites, including ad serving, traffic reporting and personalization.