Slide 3.

Chapter 3
E-Business
Infrastructure

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
Slide 3.2

Learning Outcomes

• Outline the hardware and software technologies

used to build an e-business infrastructure within
an organization and with its partners

• Outline the hardware and software requirements

necessary to enable employee access to the
Internet and hosting of e-commerce services.

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Management Issues

• What are the practical risks to the organization of

failure to manage e-commerce infrastructure
adequately?

• How should staff access to the Internet

be managed?

• How should we evaluate the relevance of web

services and open source software?

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Why the Jargon?

• Why do business managers need to know about

the jargon and technology?

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Activity 3.1
Infrastructure Risk Assessment
• Make a list of the potential problems for
customers of an online retailer
• You should consider problems faced by users of
e-business applications who are both internal and
external to the organization
• Base your answer on problems you have
experienced on a website that can be related to
network, hardware and software failures or
problems with data quality.

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
Slide 3.6

Typical Problems

• Website communications too slow

• Website not available

• Bugs on site through pages being unavailable or

information typed in forms not being executed

• Ordered products not delivered on time

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Typical Problems (Continued)

• E-mails not replied to

• Customers’ privacy or trust is broken through

security problems such as credit cards being
stolen or addresses sold to other companies.

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Figure 3.1 A five-layer model of e-business infrastructure

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Table 3.1 Key management issues of e-business infrastructure

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Table 3.1 Key management issues of e-business infrastructure (Continued)

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Activity
Internet Infrastructure Components
• Write down all the different types of hardware and
software involved from when a user types in a
web address such as www.google.com to the
website being loaded.

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
Slide 3.12

Physical and network infrastructure components of the Internet (Levels IV

Figure 3.2
and III in Figure 3.1)
David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Figure 3.5 The Netcraft index of number of servers

Source: Netcraft web Server Survey. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey. html. Netcraft

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Figure 3.6 Firewall positions within the e-business infrastructure of the B2B company

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Activity 3.3
A Common Problem with Intranets and
Extranets

• A B2B company has found that after an initial

surge of interest in its intranet and extranet,
usage has declined dramatically. The
e-business manager wants to achieve these
aims:
• Increase usage
• Produce more dynamic content
• Encouraging more clients to order (extranet).
• What would you suggest?

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Suggested Answers

• Identify benefits
• Involve staff with development
• Find system sponsors, owners and advocates
• Train on benefits
• Keep content fresh, relevant and where possible,
fun
• Use e-mail to encourage usage

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Figure 3.7 Information exchange between a web browser and a web server

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Figure 3.8 Transaction log file example

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Figure 3.9 Browsershots – a service for testing cross-browser compatibility

Source: www.browsershots.org

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Understanding Internet Access Tools

and Concepts – Match the Definitions
• Blogs
• Feeds
• IPTV
• Peer-to-peer
• Social networks
• Tagging
• VOIP

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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URLs and Domain Names

• Web addresses are structured in a standard way as
follows:

• http://www.domain-name.extension/filename.html

• What do the following extensions or global top level

domains stand for?
– .com
– .co.uk, .uk.com
– .org or .org.uk
– .gov
– .edu, .ac.uk
– .int
– .net
– .biz
– .info
David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Box 3.3
Identify URL Components
• Protocol
• Host or hostname
• Subdomain
• Domain name
• Top-level domain or TLD
• Second-level domain (SLD)
• The port
• The path
• URL parameter http://video.google.co.uk:8
• Anchor or fragment 0/videoplay?docid=724692
7612831078230&hl=en#0
0h02m30s
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David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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HTML and XML

• HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

A standard format used to define the text and
layout of web pages. HTML files usually have
the extension .HTML or .HTM

• XML or eXtensible Markup Language

A standard for transferring structured data,
unlike HTML which is purely presentational

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Figure 3.13 The TCP/IP protocol

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Home page index.html for an example B2B company in a web browser

Figure 3.14
showing HTML source in text editor
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Figure 3.15 Architecture of semantic web system used at EDF

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XML Example

Product>
<Action Value5”Delete”/>
<ProductID>118003-008</ProductID>
</Product>
<Product Type5”Good” SchemaCategoryRef5”C43171801”>
<ProductID>140141-002</ProductID>
<UOM><UOMCoded>EA</UOMCoded></UOM>
<Manufacturer>Compaq</Manufacturer>
<LeadTime>2</LeadTime>
<CountryOfOrigin>
<Country><CountryCoded>US</CountryCoded></Country>
</CountryOfOrigin>
David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Media Standards
• GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) A graphics
format and compression algorithm best used for
simple graphics.

• JPEG (Joint Photographics Experts Group) A

graphics format and compression algorithm best used
for photographs.

• Streaming media Sound and video that can be

experienced within a web browser before the whole
clip is downloaded e.g. Real Networks .rm format

• Video standards include MPEG and .AVI

• Sound standards include MP3 and WMA

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(a) Fragmented applications infrastructure, (b) integrated applications

Figure 3.17
infrastructure
Source: Adapted from Hasselbring (2000)

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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(a) Fragmented applications infrastructure, (b) integrated applications

Figure 3.17
infrastructure (Continued)
Source: Adapted from Hasselbring (2000)

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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Figure 3.19 Elements of e-business infrastructure that require management

David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012
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David Chaffey, E-Business & E-Commerce Management, 5th Edition, © Marketing Insights Limited 2012