毕业论文外文翻译构建中小型企业电子商务.doc

II-文献综述外文原文一Building an e-business foundation for a small-to-medium business作者：Christopher L Merrill.国籍：USA出处：/PDFweb/Fe8a9936457238bdcb6ce2008b728c50p.htm原文正文：Introduction and overviewThis article explains how a solution provider can help a small or medium business become an e-business. A fictional company serves as a case study of extending a simple Web presence to enable commerce, real-time collaboration, and partner exchange for small and medium businesses. The solution features products from the IBM Express Portfolio.IntroductionNo business, big or small, can ignore the Web these days. The decision to become an e-business can result from any number of challenges, including the need to adopt new technologies imposed by large customers who drive the companys business. In increasing numbers, small- and medium- sized companies find that they must meet the IT requirements of the bigger companies they supply, or lose business to competitors who have evolved into e-businesses. For example, some large retail firms (sometimes referred to as gorillas) require their suppliers to comply with specific standards to meet or improve the retailers IT requirements. Other smaller businesses create their own challenges in their quest to wrest market share from their competitors.Regardless of the driving force, small and medium businesses must become e-businesses to remain competitive in spite of a unique set of technical challenges and demands. To meet these challenges, these businesses often look to solution providers and business partners to assist in the transformation. This, in turn, creates many market opportunities for service providers and business partners as more businesses join the ranks in the march toward acquiring e-business capability.This article is for solution developers of small-to-medium businesses, who could be in-house IT shops, services providers or business partners. It explains what you as a solution provider can do to help a small or medium business meet its goal of becoming an e-business. Our IBM Software Group System House eExchange team has developed a solution based on this scenario. Based on our market research, weve defined a hypothetical company called the Swish Swash Windshield Wiper Company. Using our services as a solution provider, well show how this company can establish an Internet presence and progressively extend its reach in the marketplace to serve its customers more effectively. This article and subsequent articles in this series illustrate how IBM products and solutions, in particular the IBM Express Portfolio of products, can help you create and evolve such a solution. Each subsequent article in this series will expand on the concepts discussed in this introduction to explain how you can enable a small or medium company for e-business.Small-to-medium business descriptionWhat are the characteristics of a small-to-medium business? We define a mid-market, small-to-medium business as a company with fewer than 1,000 employees. The typical company has been in business for 17 years and has between six and ten branch offices. It is located in a suburban office park and uses local solution providers to build and maintain its IT solutions.The number of IT staff for any business scales with the size of the company. On average, companies between 100 and 249 employees dedicate five staff members to IT-related projects. This number sometimes exceeds 20 in companies between 500 and 999 employees.Business valuesCompared to large enterprises, a smaller business may have a limited budget for building adaptive, information technology infrastructures. With fewer resources, it needs tools and solutions that work out of the box, with minimal additional services.The most important business objectives are reducing operating costs, improving process efficiency, and demonstrating quick return on investment. Solution development, customization, and deployment must be rapid, lowering the cost of services. Ease of installation and upgrade are important too, and unwanted features must be avoided to keep cost and complexity in check. The time required to implement such a solution should be measured in weeks and days, not months. At the same time, the solution needs to represent a competitive advantage.To help smaller companies attain these goals, solution providers look for features that enable easy installation and administration of their solutions. Products must be self-diagnosing and self-correcting in response to user, environmental, and internal errors. They must also provide simple upgrade paths for increasing functions and migrating to new releases. All of these attributes reduce the training, technical expertise, and time commitments required of the end users in the SMB.Business contextFor this article, weve chosen a fictional automobile windshield wiper company as a case study. Our company, the Swish Swash Windshield Wiper Company, is a medium-sized business with seven branch offices and 800 employees, including 19 IT staff members. Swish Swash has been in business for 15 years, selling products through mail-order catalog and at retail locations through a network of resellers who are business partners. Customers can obtain product information from the companys printed catalog and can purchase products from the business partners or place direct orders by mail, telephone, or fax. Several staff members maintain or interact with the IT system: An office manager, who administers information systems A business analyst, who maintains product information and monitors business results An order clerk, who enters customers orders A customer support representative, who takes telephone calls and responds to customers questions and concerns Figure 1 illustrates the interaction between the roles in the broader business context.Figure 1. Business context diagramThe Swish Swash Windshield Wiper Company wants to extend its business, enabling customers to browse catalogs and order online, while still maintaining a high level of customer service and interaction. At the same time, it want to connect with its suppliers and resellers electronically, integrating its back-end processes and sharing data with these business partners. Once this is accomplished, it wants to continually improve its site and capabilities to provide the best user experience for both customers and partners, and a competitive advantage for itself.Solution overviewAn infrastructure is the foundation of a business or organization, serving as the framework for internal and external communication, processes, and transactions. The infrastructures architecture determines how functional and extensible the system will be in meeting future requirements. Using a solid system infrastructure ensures a trusted, high-performance solution.Small business infrastructures must provide reliable, efficient communications with business partners, suppliers, and customers. They must also guarantee performance for critical, internal applications. Figure 2 represents the scenario topology for our e-business infrastructure. See Implementing the solution for definitions of each component.Figure 2. Solution topologyYou can benefit from a solution based on this topology if your business: Wants to extend its catalog presence to the Web Needs a scalable, highly available, secure environment for e-business Needs to integrate existing and new applications Wants to advertise retail products and information on the Web Needs innovation in electronic communication to facilitate faster response times and lower costs The scenario has four stages: Web presence Commerce Live chat Business-to-business partner In the first stage of the scenario, Web presence, we build the infrastructure for e-business. We assume the business has a limited Web presence or needs to make its existing presence dynamic to attract more customers. This stage lets customers easily find information about the business and contact it through a postal address, e-mail address, or telephone number. The infrastructure provides a strong, secure, reliable foundation on the path to becoming an e-business. It supports key industry standards such as HTML, HTTP, J2EE, XML, and Web services.In the second stage, commerce, we add e-commerce capability to the existing Web site, providing the buying experience expected by online customers. Customers can browse a catalog and view detailed product information, use a personalized, virtual shopping cart, and pay for purchases electronically. This stage provides a secure, reliable platform for conducting e-commerce, supports industry standards, and seamlessly integrates with existing back-end systems like inventory databases.In stage three, live chat, we extend the e-business with human interaction to give it more responsive, personal contact with its customers. When a customer has a question about a product or about how to complete a purchase, they can simply communicate with a customer support agent through an applet. Agents can immediately contact internal product experts or accounting personnel and give quick answers to customers. This instant messaging fulfills stringent security and availability requirements, and is easy for both customers and agents to use.Smaller businesses can also benefit by electronically connecting to suppliers and resellers. In stage four, business-to-business partner, we implement business process integration and data sharing among trading partners. This stage helps reduce integration costs and enables faster deployment of new processes and services. It assures reliable message delivery and provides heterogeneous, any-to-any connectivity through a standard API.Implementing the solutionEach stage in the solution requires a sequence of development activities to implement the Swish Swash solution. These development activities are described in this section. Web presenceTo enable the e-business Web site, we: Define and create a database used by the Web site to serve dynamically rendered content and graphics. Develop graphics such as page banners, business logos, buttons, animations or other special effects. Develop page content such as company, product, news, contact, and employment information. Develop the Web site by combining static text, graphics, and navigation and rendering dynamic content served from the database. Test and deploy the site. CommerceTo extend the Web site to support on-line transactions, we: Create the page layout and shopping flow based on a store sample. Create the catalog structure and add product information, including name, category, stock keeping unit (SKU) number, and image. Create a user directory for customer data and authentication. Configure the store for offline payments. The company processes payments through POS devices. Publish the store so that it can be viewed using a browser. Test and deploy the store. Live chatTo provide live chat capability and integrate real-time communication into the Web site, we: Modify the existing Web pages to add a feature (button, link, or awareness applet) that lets a customer request help from a customer service representative. Add a real-time collaboration server to the existing infrastructure. Test and deploy the collaboration application. Business-to-business partnerTo create a business-to-business gateway between the company and its resellers, and implement the required protocols, we: Install and configure the gateway. Establish business partner profiles. Set up document exchange protocols and security protocols. Optionally set up an audit log for viewing and tracking documents. Integrate existing applications to submit and receive catalogs and purchase orders via the gateway. Test and deploy the business-to-business gateway. We assume that the IT staff at Swish Swash Windshield Wiper is small in number, has no Java platform knowledge, and therefore hires a solution provider to build the company Web site. Our solution provider team performs the steps listed above and involves the IT staff at Swish Swash Windshield Wiper in deploying the solution to a production system and managing the deployed solution.The Swish Swash Windshield Wiper Companys existing IT infrastructure includes an intranet, e-mail, and Internet access for conducting company business. It uses packaged applications for HR management, order fulfillment, and inventory. The sales organization developed a simple database to maintain customer information.The solution includes components described in the following table. Refer to Solution overview for a diagram that shows relationships between these components.ComponentDescriptionWeb serverProvides a Web server (HTTP server) with a servlet redirector. Separating the Web server from the application server improves performance and enhances security.Application serverActs as the customer Web site server. It provides a servlet container that supports Java servlets and JSP components defined by the J2EE specification.User directoryStores all profile information registered by customers. It supports SMB commerce and subsequent stages.Collaboration serverProvides real-time support for live chat with customers. A customer can use live chat to talk to customer support personnel about product availability. Customer support personnel can perform a search against the inventory database to determine status.Database serverStores dynamic information including company news and product details.Business integration (BI) gatewayProvides B2B communication capabilities enabling Swish Swash to supply catalogs to and receive orders from its resellers.Business integration partner repository Manages relationships with business partners. Stores partner information and associated credentials needed by the BI gateway.Data transformationTransforms data stored in Swish Swashs inventory database to the format used by the business partner, for example, EDI and delivers data to BI gateway.Commerce serverProvides online shopping capabilities to customers.Inventory applicationContains an existing application that Swish Swash uses to manage inventory. The database exports data as comma-separated values (CSVs) that are used as input to the commerce server. The database supports SQL access, which is used to integrate the data transformation application.Storage managementLets Swish Swash monitor and manage disk storage capacity, availability, and performance.Implementing with IBM Express productsWith the generic solution architecture now defined, our next step maps IBM products onto the architecture. Figure 3. Product mapThe components shown in the solution topology map to the IBM products listed in the following table.ComponentIBM ProductWeb serverIBM HTTP Server, Version 2.0Application serverIBM WebSphere Application Server - Express, Version 5.0.2User directoryIBM Directory Server, Version 5.1Lotus Domino, Version 6.5Collaboration serverIBM Lotus Sametime, Version 3.1IBM Lotus Domino, Version 6.5Database serverIBM DB2 UDB - Express, Version 8.1.2Business integration (BI) gateway and partner repositoryIBM WebSphere Business Integration Connect - Express, Version 4.2Data transformationWebSphere applicationCommerce serverIBM WebSphere Commerce - Express, Version Inventory applicationExisting application uses DB2 for OS/400 databaseStorage managementIBM Tivoli Storage Resource Manager - Express, Version 1.2For Web site development we use IBM WebSphere Studio Site Developer, Version 5.1 and for the repository we use Concurrent Versions System (CVS), Version 1.11.6. CVS is an open-source version control system.A typical development platform could be Microsoft Windows- or Linux-based, with the CVS shared code repository residing on Linux. The physical topology integrates the solution components in a three-tier Windows environment, using three IBM eServer xSeries 220 systems to host the Web server, application server, and database server components. The entire solution is subsequently deployed to one IBM eServer iSeries 825 system.Future articles in this series will cover aspects of the various phases in more detail. Some topics include: Separating static and dynamic content using tiles and frames to build the Web site Using rapid application development to build an online catalogCreating dynamic Web content using IBM SQL JSP tags Adding tiles to the WebSphere Commerce sample store. (The Tiles framework makes it possible to separate Web page layout from the content, but all pages must be served from your application server.) Customizing a store with WebSphere Commerce Express Populating catalog data from CSV files Automating application server configuration using the WebSphere Administrative Console and JACL scripts Building a deployable installation package. ConclusionSmall- and medium-sized companies have pressing business needs that can be addressed with an affordable, integrated, and extensible IT infrastructure. The IBM Express products provide an on-ramp for smaller business customers, solution providers, and ISVs to build robust infrastructures and solutions to meet the competitive demands of the mid-market. The IBM Express Portfolio of products provides a wide range of e-business function, from simple Web site development to commerce to B2B integration, and also lays the foundation for your IT infrastructure to grow with your business.中文译文一构建中小型企业电子商务作者：Luc Chamberland ，aul Sims国籍：美国出处：/PDFweb/Fe8a9936457238bdcb6ce2008b728c50p.htm介绍和概述本文介绍了供应商如何帮助中小企业提供电子商务解决方案。以一个虚构的公司为例，对中小型企业的以下活动进行了案例分析：扩展简单 Web 表示以使它可以进行商务、实时协作、伙伴转换和现场分析。解决方案使用了 IBM Express Portfolio 中的产品。简介现在，不管公司规模大小