The Evolution of the Web for Business

Business people cannot fail to see the potential for web commerce, integration with back-office systems, customer interaction and internal communication. What's holding things back?

We assert that building websites the right way is still very expensive and difficult. This is because there is no clear path from a traditional web site to a web business solution. Why not? This paper attempts to illucidate.

Early Web

[Cue Holst's Mars] The Web was created for academics. They need to get their ideas out there and they are technically literate. As they joined forces with software engineers in the early days they created many wonderful bells and whistles. However, the tools to exploit these techniques were sadly techie-orientated.

The web explosion

Two classes of tool have emerged to support the enormous growth in web presence: Simple web site builders such as Microsoft Front Page and sophisticated design tools such as Macromedia's Dreamweaver and associated products. These have made a great contribution because they hide a lot of the technical complexity. However, in supporting an old model of the web they are racing down a dead-end street.

e-business emerges

The first e-business solutions needed to support shopping online. These systems emerged at a time when the technology was still in its infancy. Many different approaches were tried and most work well if you have a design team and a programming team with plenty of time available working closely together. This is a model that is well-suited to the hot-house environment of classic high-tech startups. As a business grows this model becomes unscaleable, unaffordable or both so most of the early systems have had to be replaced - at considerable cost.

More recently some excellent high-level development platforms have emerged from Sun, IBM and others. Platforms like Websphere™ enable wonderful custom applications to be created. However, you need their level of technical expertise to achieve good results. In addition there are packaged platforms from the likes of Commerce One for global transaction management - fantastic capability with price tags to match.

Customer interaction

A parallel trend in automating "Customer Relationship Management" has strongly affected people's approach to web development. The large-company approach to this has been to acquire a major software package like Siebel or Broadvision with a 7-figure tag. Smaller businesses have an even greater need for good customer interaction, especally if they are trading electronically. However, a good way for them to implement has yet to emerge.

Internal communication

As a company grows beyond a single office environment, staff need to share a great deal of information amongst themselves. Relying on fax and email for this involves little capital cost but can create huge hidden costs. One solution is to grow existing LANs into corporate networks but this has major repercussions in terms of compexity, security and maintenance cost. An Internet-based intranet can be inexpensive to run and highly effective in removing the spacial dimension from your internal company communications. With so many people now working at home or on the road this can have a major impact.

Integration

Packed software is an imperative for businesses with little to spend on IT so most small businesses rely heavily upon them. However, it is generally recognised that the most significant costs (and challeges) arise from the need to make all these disparate systems work together. In the corporate MIS domain these costs are so high that the "Enterprise Application Integration" solutions now being adopted now have 7-figure costs. Small businesses must find equivalent solutions and web technology promises many of the answers.

The next wave

If it existed, the right web platform for small business today would be one that addressed all the above requirements in an affordable manner. Watch this space!