Designing Systems for Internet Commerce (2nd Edition) - Softcover

Treese, G. Winfield

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201760355 ISBN 13: 9780201760354

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2002

Synopsis

A guide to the business and technical considerations of building systems for pursuing commerce on the Internet. Discusses such aspects as consumer retail, business to business, and information commerce business models, privacy versus merchandising. Softcover. Previous edition c1998.

About this title

About the Author

G. Winfield Treese is a principal at Serissa Research, Inc., a consulting company focused on enhancing the security of Internet applications. Previously, he was part of the founding team at Open Market, Inc., an early pioneer in developing applications for Internet commerce.

Lawrence C. Stewart is a principal at Serissa Research, Inc., a consulting company focused on enhancing the security of Internet applications. Previously, he was part of the founding team at Open Market, Inc., an early pioneer in developing applications for Internet commerce.

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From the Back Cover

Thanks to advances in Internet commerce, every enterprise&;even the smallest home-based business&;now has the power to create a global presence. Each day, more businesses are drawn to the promise of increased access to customers, combined with dramatic cost reductions. However, consumer expectations and demands seem to increase daily. The major challenge in building successful Internet commerce sites continues to be how to use Internet technology most effectively to deliver added value to customers.

Written by two of the leading authorities in the field of Internet commerce, Designing Systems for Internet Commerce, Second Edition , explores the core issues surrounding the construction of successful Internet commerce systems. It provides a solid foundation, focusing on best practices and approaches for Internet architecture and design. This significant new edition reflects lessons learned since the late 1990s, explaining how and why essential technologies and commerce issues have evolved and how those changes have resulted in a new era for commerce systems. Topics covered include:

Extensible markup language (XML)

The evolution of shopping carts and order management

Integration with enterprise applications

Development of reliable and scalable systems

Mobile and wireless systems and technologies

Designing Systems for Internet Commerce is your key to building a commerce site that will meet your business needs and satisfy demanding customers.

With a focus on problem solving, the authors share their mastery with you as they explore the major challenges and obstacles related to Internet commerce architecture and strategy. This comprehensive coverage includes:

Core Internet business strategy

Retail and B2B systems

Information commerce business models with case studies

Functional architecture

Implementation strategies, such as outsourcing, custom development, packaged applications, project management, 7x24 operation, and multiorganization operation

The building blocks of Internet commerce, including media and application integration, sessions and cookies, object technology, and application servers

Proven strategies for system design

Creating and managing content

Essential considerations in cryptography and system security

Payment systems and transaction processing

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In 1994, The Economist ranked the Internet between the telephone and the printing press in its long-term impact on the world. Just as those inventions transformed society, so the Internet has already begun a transformation—one that is happening much faster than the earlier revolutions. Commerce, of course, is one arena already feeling the effects of the Internet. In the past few years, we have seen dramatic changes in some businesses, the creation of new businesses, and significant effects on others.

When the first edition of this book was published in 1998, Internet commerce was still a relatively new idea and was not yet part of the mainstream thinking of businesses around the world. Today, that situation has clearly changed. Many companies now have long experience with Internet commerce, and some sellers, such as Amazon.com, have become household names. Indeed, since 1998 we have seen an enormous rise and fall of Internet commerce excitement, as the so-called dot-com companies have grabbed investment and attention but precious little revenue. Many people have concluded that Internet commerce was simply a quickly passing fad, all hype and no reality.

We think that the opposite is true. The Internet continues to revolutionize business in many ways, and one of those ways—which is the focus of this book—is the selling of goods and services directly to buyers over the Internet. The truth today is that many companies are doing it, and doing it profitably. This book is about creating the kinds of computer systems that can be used for that kind of business.

So what went wrong with the dot-coms? It is easy to find many problems, including some that seem laughably obvious in hindsight. A common and fundamental problem, however, was that the companies failed to focus on the use of Internet technology to deliver value to customers. What we attempt to do in this book is to explore precisely how to do that. The business strategy is, of course, a critical aspect of success in Internet commerce. Sometimes that strategy is essentially a traditional one that can now take advantage of the Internet as a new channel, whereas at other times the technology provides entirely new ways of bringing value to customers. We explore both of these paths.

In a sense, Internet commerce is no longer a cutting-edge idea. Rather, it has become one of the standard ways of doing business, even if not quite everyone is doing it yet. Such a shift in business practice has many implications, and one of the most important is that the computer systems have to get it right. In the early days of Internet commerce, losing an order wasn't a fatal mistake. The systems were not always robust. That situation has clearly changed. Today's customers have much higher standards and expectations, and they can easily find a competitor who can do a better job if one company fails to satisfy them. Sadly, many companies have not yet learned this lesson. As we were writing the last few pages of the manuscript for this book, there were reports of a well-known merchant system that allowed customers to change the prices at will. Such problems today are not just curiosities; they are significant risks to a company's continuing business.

The audience for this book is what we call the Internet commerce team. This team includes people responsible for business and those responsible for technology. It includes those who develop the strategic vision for a company and those who put the strategy into action. In other words, the Internet commerce team is the group of people who work to make Internet commerce happen, from vision to implementation.

Throughout the book, we emphasize both practice and principles—the what and the why. Practices are the actions—the specific ideas for specific circumstances. Principles are the general rules—the elements on which practices are built. As technology changes (or, for that matter, as business models change), the practices will need to change. The principles, in contrast, change more slowly and can be applied in a wide variety of circumstances. When a team understands the principles underlying what they do, they can adapt to changing circumstances and develop new practices. Without that understanding, they can become incapacitated when the situation changes and different practices are required.

What the technology brings is a combination of new opportunities, changing cost structures, new customers, and shorter response times. The technological opportunities must be combined with and tempered by the business goals. This book is about that combination—designing computer systems for doing business on open networks.

When we say this book is about design, we mean that it is intended to help with the design process. It doesn't give all the answers; the actual design for your business requirements is likely to be very different from someone else's. Nonetheless, we can explore some of the common issues and critical questions to ask when planning any system for Internet commerce. In the process, we look at some of the key technologies of today and apply those technologies in several examples.

A word of warning: at times it may seem that we are overly concerned with potential problems—the things that can go wrong. These are not reasons to avoid Internet commerce. Rather, we think it is important to approach Internet commerce as you would any other business proposition, understanding the downside as well as the upside, the risks as well as the benefits. On balance, using the Internet for commerce can be a tre-mendous asset for businesses. Doing everything possible to maximize the chances for success is merely good business.

We have created a Web site for this book at http://www.serissa.com/Commerce/.

Changes in the Second Edition

Most of the changes in this edition reflect one of two things: first, the experience that has been gained with Internet commerce systems over the past four years, and second, some new technologies that have emerged during that period. The new technologies include widespread use of XML, the growing use of Web services, evolution in con-tent management systems, the importance of integration with other enterprise information systems, and the growth of mobile and wireless systems.

Some things have not changed. As before, our focus remains primarily on the use of the available technology to deliver value to customers and on the importance of system architecture in achieving that end. We hope this will help you create Internet commerce systems that will result in successful businesses.

We wrote the first edition of this book while employed at Open Market, Inc., where we began developing systems for Internet commerce in 1994. Open Market was acquired by divine, Inc., in October 2001. Although many of Open Market's Internet commerce products are no longer available, we have continued to use some of the architectural approaches developed there as useful examples in this edition.

—Win Treese
Wayland, Massachusetts
treese@serissa.com

—Larry Stewart
Wayland, Massachusetts
stewart@serissa.com

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Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0201760355
• ISBN 13: 9780201760354
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 490