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Introduction

Through the late 20th and early 21st centuries, technologists, vendors, and users alike have been searching for the next great wave in computing. The 1980s could accurately be labeled the decade of the personal computer, and the 1990s could just as appropriately be titled the decade of the Internet. Many experts would propose that the […]
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Architecture and Hardware

Mobile Commerce: What It Is and What It Could Be

Just a few years ago, many pundits proclaimed that m-commerce had arrived, and would shortly provide unprecedented commercial functionality to the masses [2, 5]. Cell phone users were expected to be routinely accessing data online [5], and speedy third-generation cellular standards would soon solve associated bandwidth difficulties [2]. It hasn’t quite worked out that way—it […]
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Architecture and Hardware

Introduction

As I sit here considering how to introduce this special section on e-services, I'm reminded of a superb experience I recently had filing my U.S. federal income tax return. In lieu of a $400 fee for paying someone to prepare my modestly complex 2002 financial circumstances, and having moved to a new state far from my long-time accountant, I decided to take a chance on one of the new tax filing services available online. This would be, in fact, my first substantial e-services experience as a consumer. Given I was dealing with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the fact that thousands of dollars were at stake, it was no mere exercise to me.
Architecture and Hardware

What Are Web Services?

A Web service, as defined by the W3C Web Services Architecture Working Group, is "a software application identified by a URI, whose interfaces and bindings are capable of being defined, described, and discovered as XML artifacts. A Web service supports direct interactions with other software agents using XML-based messages exchanged via Internet-based protocols."1 Others refine this definition further by requiring the description be a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) document and the protocol be SOAP.
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Architecture and Hardware

The Web Services Debate: .net vs. J2ee

According to nearly every industry pundit, including my esteemed (though misinformed) colleague from Sun Microsystems, integration of systems is critically important for most enterprises. The ability to quickly assimilate and aggregate large amounts of information from disparate systems can mean the difference between life and death for an organization. Ease of access by customers and […]
Architecture and Hardware

The Web Services Debate: J2ee vs. .net

As the articles in this section attest, the future of Web services is as certain as it is unclear. That is, the Web services arena is most certainly the next technological wave; what is not so clear is what direction (of many) that wave will flow. The challenge of selecting the tools to successfully pull all the components together is particularly daunting.
Architecture and Hardware

Technology Enablers to Recover from Failures in E-Services

Although the goal of e-providers should be to provide quality service to all customers at all times, occasional failure is inevitable. Whether the failure is inherent in the content of the e-service (for example, a service that does not meet the expectations of the customer) or in the process (for example, the customer encountered problems with a Web site), the e-provider must be prepared to recover from this failure---a process known as service recovery. Successful service recovery is critical to customer retention and maintaining or possibly increasing customer loyalty [1]. Although service recovery has received a significant amount of attention in the fields of marketing (for example, [2]) and operations management (for example, [3]), the existing concepts must be adapted to the e-service environment. Accordingly, we provide the following seven action items for an e-service provider to remember when it attempts to recover from a service failure:
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Computing Applications

Marketing Challenges of E-Services

Technological innovations---such as the telephone, television, and the Internet---enable new capabilities that may create long-lasting changes in organizational structure, conduct, and performance. E-commerce currently accounts for a small portion of the U.S. economy, and an even smaller portion of the economies of other developed countries. Hence, marketers imperfectly understand the long-run ramifications of e-commerce for the behavior of buyers and sellers, organizational conduct and performance, the function and evolution of markets, and public policy. For example, there are differences between traditional and computer-mediated buying environments, with the latter characterized by increased information flows, interactivity, reduced information asymmetry between buyers and sellers, and a shift away from geographically based competition. However, the consequences of these features for organizational behavior are (as yet) unclear.
Computing Applications

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