eBusiness Essentials

Exploring the emerging world of e-business, a global and real-time activity, the authors of this book focus on the hardware, software and networks that are needed to connect a community of interest and allow them to share information. The book considers, in detail, the specialized software used for payments (billing, charging, invoicing, account management), security (authorization, authentication, privacy, data integrity and audit) and service support (problem management, configuration control). It examines the flow of orders, fulfillment and payments, showing how various players cooperate to provide an end product or service to the consumer and looking at the methods of establishing a virtual market. The book also includes an account of the development of standards for electronic trading (notably EDI), the spread of a network over which electronic trading was viable (the Internet) and the development of a ubiquitous means of sharing Web information (Web technology).