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The design of the ePlatform is based on a conceptual framework
on the Web Era's of the e-world. A concise paper will appear in
Information and Management in early 2007 (currently in press as
of December 31, 2006). A long version of the evolutionary view of
the Web will be provided next. The architecture of an e-Platform
to conduct businesses, e.g., planning and execution of collaborative
logistics services for a shipment request, was first published in
Chapter 5 of the book "4th
Party Cyber Logistics for Air Cargo" published by Springer
(originally by Kluwer Academic Publishers). We will expand the discussion
here later. [posted December 31, 2006].
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e-Business:
An Artifact of the Integrative Web Era
Beginning around
1995, the World Wide Web revolutionizes business trading,
from a reactive information-based e-commerce portal in the
early 1990¡¦s, to the interactive buy-sell e-commerce
website of mid 1990¡¦s. An emerging integrative era,
in late 1990¡¦s to present, beckons the integration
of trading activities to core business process. The management
of these new and old e-commerce activities becomes an imperative
evolutionary impetus. New dimension ¡V integral interoperability
- is beginning to emerge in some websites. Coupled with
interactivity, websites seek to develop capability to integrate
processes online. No longer are websites used merely for
online trading activities (e-commerce activities),
but also for the online management of business processes
(e-business processes). This is the era that witnesses
the emergence of e-business processes such as e-supply-chain-management,
e-collaboration, e-reengineering, and e-procurement. Here,
e-commerce activities and e-business processes are intertwined
online, creating a genre of websites that are both marketplaces
and management platforms. Management of business processes
can be conducted concurrently with commerce activities to
achieve online concurrence in design, marketing, and business-process
management. Such websites facilitate collaborations, strategic
alliances and provide one-stop business services. In essence,
websites have evolved from a two-way interactive environment
to an any-to-any integrative platform of business management
and commerce.
On the other hand, online
decision support system is still at its infancy. We believe
that online DSS is likely to play a significant role in
the next phase of e-evolution. Particularly, DSS is a key
to the provision of online knowledge management and sharing,
a critical e-business process of the future. As companies
leverage the knowledge-rich Web to conduct effective e-business
processes, websites with knowledge management capability
will proliferate. Companies and industries will need to
re-engineer their internal and external processes to tap
into this powerful resource.
To be continued... [Posted:
December 31, 2006]
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