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1. Thank you
2. Editor's paper: eCommerce enabling technologies as winds of change: A quick overview of future trends
3. Related new sections to this issue in eComInfoCenter
4. Why not sponsor the next issue?
5. Acknowledgements

Once again, we thank all of you for joining and giving us the opportunity to "speak" to you and build a relationship for the benefit of us both. Along with your fellow subscribers to The eCommerce Analyst, you already form a web community of people with common interests in eCommerce from over 42 countries from the five continents and growing. Again, we thank you for your interest.
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2. Editor's paper

 eCommerce enabling technologies as winds of change: A quick overview of future trends

By Slim Baltagi
eCommerce Info Center
 

PREVIEW:

   Some time ago, I asked myself the simple, yet complex, question: "What are the future trends in eCommerce enabling technologies?" I turned to the WWW for the answer as I believe that the speed with which both the applications and technology are changing makes the WWW itself the best source to obtain information about these changes if it is approached with a good searching strategy. Tens of working hours later, you are looking at the result: An explanatory paper that supplements a selection of some recent relevant news, articles, reports, slide presentations and reference sites which I organized in two new sections (Future trends & Tech references) in eComInfoCenter. They can provide endless hours of exploration and discovery but the question itself is far from being fully answered! eCommerce technologies areas are as broad as eCommerce is impacting every aspect of doing business. Although this draft is an extensive search on the Net, it is by no means exhaustive. It only cover some areas. It is going to be a continual work-in-progress and I will attempt to constantly improve upon it, keep up with the dynamic nature of the Internet, adjust it  and  cover more related topics. I hope to keep you updated on the latest eCommerce trends and developments in eCommerce technologies. You will be notified of future work.

• On the definition of eCommerce we opt for!
• The business model chosen (in house, outsourcing, inter-sourcing, ...)
• The category of eCommerce (B2C: Business-to-Consumer, B2B: Business-to-Business, B2A: Buisness-to-Administration, C2C: Consumer-to-Consumer, ...)
• The type of eCommerce ( selling soft-goods or hard-goods, auctions,...),
• The level of eCommerce presence opted for (Online commerce but no integration with your business systems. Integration of your Web site with your business's payment systems only. Complete integration of your Web  with all other aspects of your business--payment systems, order fulfillment, inventory control, and all of your traditional business functions)

But, realizing that a full classification of eCommerce enabling technologies is beyond the scope of this paper and beyond our current resources. I confined myself to a selection of future trends in eCommerce enabling technologies as today’s eCommerce technologies are changing daily and are dynamic in nature. They are exploiting the power of the internet as an open, naturally distributed network, packet switching, and a universal communications protocol and going beyond its limitations.

NOTE: Those of you who need more details about a specific aspect of the future trends retained in this quick overview, may also want to consult the matching subsection in Future trends: a new section in eComInfoCenter.com

1. Broadband Technologies
It is an important new trend of the next decade to connect places and people in powerful new ways. What are the bandwidth options available to businesses and consumers today and in the future? A series of big competing technologies represented by the collective term broadband technologies allow users to send and receive data at volumes and speeds far greater than the current 28.8 or 56Kbps analog modem rates. Despite their limited availability, they seem promising:

• 1. Cable: Cable modem networks operate like giant local-area networks(LANs)- This type of service is always on.
• 2. Telephone: Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) offers throughtput up tp 1 Mbps and uses existing phone lines.
• 3. Wireless: Though they are unproven, wireless networks could be fastest to deploy as they don't require digging cables.

2. New Internet devices

• There is a growing array of devices that perform limited range of computing tasks on the market now ranging from phones with screens and keyboards that let you surf the Net and use E-mail to network computers with limited functions. More and more Internet users are accessing Web services through new Internet devices and appliances: TVs, cell phones, game consoles, handheld PCs, ... This will not only expand the Reach of the Internet but will impact on Web content and service providers, ISPs and end users.

3. Mobile commerce

• This platform will deliver the benefits of eCommerce directly into the consumer’s hand, via wireless technology. Mobile phone will become a uniquely powerful distribution channel, available anywhere, anytime, in the palm of the consumer’s hand. Consumers will be able to use their mobile phones (or other devices) to carry out their business wherever they are, whenever they want. The idea is delivering services and information directly into the hand of the consumer, wherever they may be. The services may include banking; the purchase and redemption of tickets and reward schemes; travel, stock shares, weather, and other information; and the formation of contracts on the move, e.g. to arrange insurance.

4. New browsers

• The Internet has become the driver for eCommerce thanks to the invention of the World Wide Web as a principal means of sharing information, and the browser as the universal front end. The average web surfer is used to spending more time on a page simply waiting for it to download, whereas traditional media are readily available for viewing at the instant of presentation. However, with improvements in the level of technology commonly available, web browsing will eventually achieve virtually instantaneous presentation as well.

• The browsers designed for the 21st century will take advantage of the emerging Internet trends and design goals: Small Size and Speed, Services on the Net, Same-Time Communication, Standards Compliance, Open Source Code. There will be small, high-speed browsers that run anywhere: from traditional PC desktops to a wide variety of devices.

• The auction site eBay introduces a task-specific browser that is optimized for tracking multiple auctions at once. This is an example of specialized user interfaces to supplement the generic browsers NS or IE. We expect to see more such specialized browsers in future trends.

5. Intelligent agents:

• The capabilities of software agents (personalized, continuously-running, autonomous) have been applied to eCommerce recently. They promise a revolution in the way businness transactions are conducted.

• Software agent technologies can be used to automate and optimize several of the most time consuming stages involved in buying and selling processes. For example, a company which needs to order additional paper supplies could have software agents monitoring the quantity and usage patterns of paper within the company, launching buying agents when supplies are becoming low. Those buying agents automatically collect information on vendors and products that may fit the needs of the company, evaluate the different offering, make a decision on which merchants and products to pursue, negotiate the terms of transactions with these merchants and finally place orders and make automated payments.

• Web-based comparative pricing services and Shopping agents find the lowest price for any item sold on the Internet. Intelligent agents that provide electronic "comparison shopping" will change the power dynamics between buyers and sellers and put new pricing pressures on e-businesses and online retailer.

6. Universal Shopping carts

• Rather than simply sending shoppers to other sites to buy, new technologies will fuse context-sensitive buying opportunities and research into a single user experience. Universal shopping carts will let portals clear transactions for participating merchants so that buyers can take care of all their shopping on one site and presumably with one simple bill.

7. Web catalogs

• The whole catalog creation process is going to see much more emphasis on personalization and one-to-one marketing. While the fully personalized interactive catalog isn't available today, the market is getting closer. Providing a more fluid search engine will be a big plus. For example, new software coming on the market will allow those searching a catalog to misspell words or even enter in concepts and still find the items they need.

8. Dynamic web pages generation

• More and more Web Sites will exploit the interactive content capabilities of the Web to dynamically response to reader needs. JavaServer PagesTM (JSP) technology provides an easy and powerful way to build web pages with dynamically-generated content. As part of the Java family, the JSP technology enables rapid development of web-based applications that are server-and platform-independent.

9. XML

• HTML made the Web possible, but it's XML, the Extensible Markup Language, that will define how we deliver and exchange content on the Web of the future. You have to write an XML page only once, and it'll be readable on WebTV, a cell phone display, and a computer monitor.

• Since its first days in the public light, XML has been very successful. This success can be seen in the presence of a multitude of free or inexpensive software systems. XML has the clear potential to become the lingua franca for information exchange on the WWW. XML is not in competition with SGML or HTML. Rather, XML has been designed to fill the gap between the two standards. XML allows the creation of software tools that can process XML objects quickly while keeping the working set of software within reasonable limits. This makes XML an ideal candidate for a message interchange format between distributed applications and components.

• Hyperlinking can go much further. As part of the XML family, XLL is going to provide a set of very sophisticated association mechanisms. XLL will build on the association techniques and ideas of proven technologies, such as HyTime and TEI-Pointers. XLL will push the idea of hyperlinking and hyper-navigation to new levels. Next generation publishing systems will be able to draw heavily from the new possibilities. Some of these new capabilities are: Multi-directional links, External links (Link information is kept outside a document), Addressing based on the structure of a document (e.g. 1st section of 2nd chapter).

• XML will make search engines relevant, but they will be XML search engines with lots of agent stuff that basically has to be built in.

10. Payment technologies

• Smart cards are similar in size and shape to stripe cards, but that's where the similarity ends! For one thing, they are (as their name implies) intelligent. Thanks to an embedded computer chip in each card, they can store up to 80 times more data than a stripe card. And because part of the stored information authenticates your unique identity to the merchant, the card is worthless to thieves. Many smart cards contain a central processing unit whose read/write capability allows new information to be added, deleted, or processed, giving them the potential to perform different functions and even run small programs. Among other potential uses, smart cards let you obtain and spend electronic money.

• In the not-too-distant future you may have a card-reader in your home that acts as a personal ATM, allowing you to download cash value onto a smart card via standard phone lines. Unlike bills and coins, you can spend this cash both in the real world and online.

• Qpass a company launched on March 1999,  developed a  brand new PowerWallet technology that lets consumers automatically fill out forms on any web site. PowerWallet promises that its form will be the last one you ever need to fill out. The company's goal is to reduce the friction in purchasing.

11. Personalization technologies

• Artificial Life, Inc. introduced of a new class of eCommerce software that answers online customer needs. Unlike shopping bots that merely compare prices, Artificial Life's new eCommerce application allow online customers to interface with virtual assistant robots and assist them in making smarter purchases.

• Interactive voice recognition (IVR) is nothing new, but combine IVR systems with eCommerce and you get voice-enabled eCommerce solutions, new technology that uses natural language speech recognition to initiate and execute transactions over the phone.

• Real-time technologies such as instant meetings, chat, shared whiteboards and shared applications will help business users communicate online with customers, coworkers, partners, suppliers, and vendors.

• eCommerce personalization techniques allow to analyse purchase behavior of online shoppers and to improve customer retention. Personalization techniques have matured beyond the basic collection and analysis of consumer data from pages that users customize themselves, to creating sites which give users a unique and personal experience as well as a level of service that can't be mirrored in local malls.

12. Web advertising technologies

• The traditional method of online advertising - scattering ads throughout a site - gains no attention for advertisers, muddles up content providers' sites and confuses visually overloaded users. So, Net-mercial.com went back to the drawing board and developed a unique caching technology that allows to quickly download transitional advertisements into the empty space while a requested homepage is loading. net-mercial.com, an online advertising technology company, launches the world's first transitional "while you wait" online advertising products and services.

• Streaming Audio, Video: "Streaming" is a way of sending media across the Internet in a broadcast-like format that takes up little bandwidth and doesn't leave a file on the user's hard drive. Millions of people daily enjoy live and on-demand audio and video from rich streaming media presentations and Web sites. With the growing availability of

fast Internet connections, these new generation of Internet-based services will become even more popular.

14. Security technologies

• There are four requirements for secure virtual transactions:
• Authentication – identity of persons involved in transactions can be verified.
• Integrity – data transferred should not be modified in transit or storage.
• Confidentiality – privacy in transactions.
• Non-repudiation – partys involved in a transaction cannot deny it after its taken place.

• Great progress has been made in improving data integrity and confidentiality by advanced encryption and digital signature technologies. With SIM and Smart and Java Card development terminal-end solutions are available. At the present time, non-repudiation and authentication require further development.

• New options for handling credit card transactions over the Web are emerging as cheaper and simpler alternatives to the dormant SET standard.

• Directory Engine uses a new technology called "Concept Induction™" to automatically analyze and categorize millions of documents. Concept Induction incorporates algorithms that model human conceptual understanding of information.

• Inktomi, best known as the search engine behind the major portals, is preparing to roll out its new Shopping engine, which attempts to aggreagte content such as reviews alongside new prices and eventually targeted ads and coupons.

• Specialized platform-independent programming languages, such as Java, facilitate making the electronic pages of the Web into a source of active software objects.

• Selling online entails more than creating an attractive Web catalog. Ideally, it also requires coordinating online sales with your existing back-end systems.

• Enterprises are turning to an emerging class of Web collaboration tools for sharing information over extranets, while sparing IT managers much of the administrative work associated with traditional groupware.

• Web content management technologies continue to evolve, creating different classes of products that tackle different areas of problems and provide a range of functionality. Web content management products include: Web collaboration and document management, Web publishing applications and a new class of enterprise portals and business intelligence tools.

• Emerging technologies and methods are developing that allow Web sites to be more than electronic brochures. Impressive database integration technologies allow sites to become "information gateways," to collect and share information with  colleagues, vendors, and customers 24/7, anywhere in the world.

These new technologies will change eCommerce as we know it today, so be prepared! The availabilty of these new technologies introduces some challenges :

• Finding the best ways to keep up to speed with these technologies.
• Deciding what will or won't work for your own situation.
• Finding or training the personnel which will be necessary.
• Reducing and managing the risk involved in new, ever changing eCommerce technologies as some new tools will become obsolete.
• Adapting to the new roles of technology as it is no longer just about automation and cost reduction. It's about information on customers, competitors, suppliers, and partners, and how that information provides competitive advantage in attracting, expanding and retaining customers
• Keeping in mind that although enabled by technology, eCommerce involves much, much more.
• Identifying the innovative business models that are enabled by the new technologies

I would like to end this newsletter quoting what my friend Armand Nabatian said in his own words after carefully reviewing it:"As we embark the ever changing frontier of eCommerce, we must direct our attention to where the flux is most and take action before the seas lead to their own ways. Such a task, of course, will require no less than the keenest observation and the ability to question where those tides came from. The greatest waves are those which we create. Technology is its force, Industry is the destination and business rides to wherever it wants to!"
 

Thank you for your time

Slim Baltagi
eCommerce Info Center
http://www.eComInfoCenter.com
Chicago, USA

As we said in the beginning, this explanatory paper was intended to supplement a selection of some recent relevant news, articles, reports, slide presentations and reference sites which we organized in two new growing sections. At your convenience, please consult:

• Future trends: http://www.ecominfocenter.com/technologies/future-trends.html
• Tech references: http://www.ecominfocenter.com/technologies/tech-references

5. Acknowledgements

   For all the friendship and moral support I'm receiving from my friends and brothers, I'm deeply grateful. I also wish to thank Arman Nabatian, my friend in Chicago, whose careful review and advice has certainly contributed to improve this paper.

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