solid research and providing a mature technology are starting to dominate a ... The best news however is that IBM is not the only company gaining back a large.
Some Thoughts on Research Perspectives in E-business 1
A Min Tjoa and Gerald Quirchmayr 1
2.3
Vienna University of Technology 2 University of Vienna 3 University of South Australia
Abstract. Research perspectives in the field are still very bright, in spite of the burst of the dot.com bubble approximately a year ago. Systems grounded in solid research and providing a mature technology are starting to dominate a field that was once plagued by immature approaches. This contribution tries to give an overview of what the challenges and opportunities for research will be in this environment.
1.
After the dot.com Bubble Has Burst
The initial phase of electronic commerce was characterized by an incredible boom and by a hype that substituted solid work and business planning. Technology also was very immature and led to several problems, such as frequent breaches of security. What had to come, came about a year a go – the burst of the dot.com bubble and a reorientation towards traditional solid and methodologically sound information technology. The first products representing this very positive development are secure payment standards, such as SET, and robust server technology, such as IBM’s eservers. Software is also getting more and more mature, i.e. security holes are plugged and systems are becoming more stable. Researchers can now look forward to investigating the hard and interesting questions which do admittedly request a lot of time and resources. This development is only possible because of industry and users realizing that without the solution of the underlying conceptual problems, there will never be a sound e-business environment.
2.
On the Way to Amore Mature Field
The turnaround starting from research some years ago is now also strongly developing in the IT industry. The gold rush is over and the stability and soundness of systems do again shape the market. IBM’s WebSphere Application Server is perhaps the most significant success story of the last few months. A solid software package sitting on top of a robust and solid hardware infrastructure, combined with highly advanced accompanying services is again becoming the number one on the market. The best news however is that IBM is not the only company gaining back a large market share with quality products. Be it SAP, SUN, Oracle, Microsoft, or others:
K. Bauknecht, A M. Tjoa, G. Quirchmayr (Eds.): EC-Web 2002, LNCS 2455, pp. 410–411, 2002. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002
Some Thoughts on Research Perspectives in E-business
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quality products are in high demand again. There are clear signs of the field becoming mature. Quality products are one, very solid research is another, the almost complete disappearance of quick and dirty hacks is perhaps the most significant one.
3.
New Research Areas Emerging in the EC-Web Conference
EC-Web [1], [2] has always been at the forefront of research and industry since it was first held in 2000 at the University of Greenwich. This year some sessions have entered new research areas, new ideas are presented, some of them quite revolutionary. All presentations have in common that they start from a solid theoretical foundation and try to advance applications through new models and new theoretical concepts. Papers presented on architectures, applications, foundations, such as query processing and data integration, security solutions and emerging standards, business models and new ideas for e-payment show how advanced the field has become. New areas emerging on the horizon, such as wireless network technology and new models for mobile communications, will offer a new challenge for researchers in the fields of electronic business and web-based technologies. Integration issues will become more and more demanding, from the technological as well as from the organizational perspective. Real world problems will again provide ample research topics, this time however with more realistic constraints: financial resources are not unlimited and the infrastructure built over the past years has to be made use of. Ideas and products will only be considered as valuable if they can contribute to revenue under these restrictions. The challenges and the number of research questions which have to be addressed are therefore greater than before. Stability, robustness, security, integration, user interface design and mobility are only some of the most promising areas that need to be looked into.
4.
Conclusion
The fields of electronic business and web-based technologies have changed dramatically. The economic crises caused by the burst of the dot.com bubble slowly turns into a sound environment in which quality, security, reliability and stability of systems are becoming the focus of development. It is undoubtedly research that has to take the lead in developing sound approaches that lead to systems meeting these requirements.
References 1. 2.
Kurt Bauknecht, Sanjay Kumar Madria, Günther Pernul (Eds.): Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies, Second International Conference, EC-Web 2001 Munich, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 2115 Springer 2001 Kurt Bauknecht, Sanjay Kumar Madria, Günther Pernul: Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies, First International Conference, EC-Web 2000, London, Proceedings. Springer 2000
