Get into business-to-business e-commerce support

E-COMMERCE HAS arrived and will stay. Use of the new cyber tools in business is an inevitable reality. Universal e-commerce needs a mega infrastructure. A wealth of opportunities awaits those willing to create it. The technology fraternity is too small to handle this. Others should pitch in. ``Business-to-Business (B2B)" e-commerce should be demystified for their benefit. An attempt is made here to explain the process rather than catalogue various B2B sites already in operation.

In e-commerce jargon the acronym `B2C' means `Business-to- customer' e-commerce, where the customers use a PC to buy small things. B2C sites can operate from a PC on a dining table with even one of those many free websites on offer. They have multiplied because of the virtual absence of entry barriers. Localised and specialist operations with a personal touch can create winning business models in B2C. Big B2C sites want to win by publicity blitzkrieg to create brand hype. Of late this area has received a surfeit of media attention.

B2B meets the needs of inter-business trade over the Web. It includes diverse players such as auctioneers and aggregators. Of these, supply chain (procurement), market places and vortals are said to be in the fast track. Procurement sites, inter alia, enable businesses to quote, evaluate multiple bids received, place or receive orders, invoice one another and settle transactions while they or on line. Buyers and sellers meet on line in `market places' to transact business as in trade fairs. Vortals provide specific trade or industry related information. They may or may not provide any trading facilities. With no trading activity, a vortal is identical to the ubiquitous information portal. Other areas include matters of common business interest such as on line corporate credit appraisals and certification.

Highly technical, B2B lacks the glamour associated with B2C. But the projected bottomline makes it attractive. The guesstimate of the B2B market at Rs. 2,500 crores in 2002 is six times that of B2C. ``Only a very small proportion of PC owners (26 per cent) and PC non-owners (15 per cent) are aware of e-commerce". ``A very high proportion among PC owners (62 per cent) and non-owners (75 per cent) said they would not like to buy through the net" http://www.giic.org/events/ec990615india.0. Internationally, the Aberdeen group projects the ratio between B2B and B2C at 10:1. The Gartner Group estimates that B2B will grow to become a $7.30 trillion trade worldwide by 2004.

B2B facilities enable business entities having their own computerised information systems to trade on line with one another. These systems comprise software elements like databases (for example, Oracle, Sybase), information packages etc. (for example, Accounting, ERP) and operating from diverse hardware platforms (for example, PCs, AS400s). Such elements may be found in thousands of combinations. It is the job of a B2B facility to resolve and reconcile these differences to ensure uninterrupted business-to-business exchange of information.

In a typical two party B2B transaction, the two systems involved, say of A and B, will both log into the Internet and call a B2B facility. The facility then reads the databases of both A and B and casts them into formats which common browsers like the Internet Explorer can understand. It then sends A's info to B and B's to A. This goes on every moment till either A or B or both terminate the Internet connection. For other pairs of systems, these differences may not be the same! Imagine the plight of a B2B system when hundreds of companies are on line! A reappraisal of technology used for this purpose has set the stage ripe for what one may call a B2B, `Big Bang'.

A computer (say a browser) displays and understands HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) pages sent by another computer (say a server) residing elsewhere. Either way the data hop through different computers in a sort of relay race. (Try Tracert msn.com in the DOS Prompt over a live connection!) At times this round trip may take quite long because of problems anywhere en route. Further, HTML forms are like typewriter output. Prior to each display in the browser, the entire form with the data has to be `typed', (processed) by the server and sent. Display of a different form or the same form with different data needs `retyping' and `re-dispatch'.

In B2B, a substantial proportion of pages displayed are in identical forms like invoices and orders with different data. In case ten invoices are needed, HTML will entail 20 communication trips, 10 up and 10 down. The server needs to query and extract the data from a database each occasion. This is clearly a waste of time and computing resources. What if the invoice form is sent only once with all the data and instructions for filling the form? Then the browser itself can construct the 10 invoices locally.

`Extensible Markup Language' (XML), a simplified subset of Standard Generalised Markup Language (SGML-ISO 8879), provides for this and has many more advanced features. A well-structured XML document contains user interfaces as in common Windows programs, for querying and manipulating the data. A well designed XML site looks and behaves like any commercial program in a LAN. Currently Internet Explorer supports XML and its bete noire Netscape has just released the Beta of Netscape Navigator Ver 6.0 supporting XML. By 2003, 80 per cent of B2B documents are expected to be XML (Gartner Group).

It was felt that traditional databases do not tackle efficiently the bundle of data and form as in XML. The concept of `Object oriented databases (ODBMS)' was evolved to get over this limitation. Those who took this concept seriously in the Nineties made a fast buck. `Junglee Corp.', Sunnyvale CA, founded by Messrs. Venky Harinarayan, Anand Rajaraman and other computer scientists of Indian origin from the U.S., came out with a virtual database management system (VDBMS) in 1996. It can be used to update web sites whenever there is a change in the underlying databases. Its success was so phenomenal that even today many across the globe tout `Junglee Like' solutions. In 1998 Junglee was taken over by Amazon.com along with another company for $280 millions!

XML gives the designers of documents freedom to define their own data elements. Thus the web may end up handling a Babel of commercial document formats. This goes against the spirit of B2B. There is talk of `standards', which in effect means creation of a universally accepted commercial dictionary, and formats. As usual, Microsoft and others back `BizTalk' and the others under the banner XML.ORG follow some other set of standards. The people behind similar pre-XML period standards called EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) seem to have formed an alliance with XML.ORG. The pity is EDI itself comes in two flavours, one essentially American and the other essentially European. Officially India approved the American EDI way back in 1992 (EDIFACT-ASEB).

B2B technology requires software to launch and maintain sites fast. Backward compatibility to display HTML after XML implementation is also required. Many software suites do these things. http://solutions.sun.com/catalogs/ sparc/Information- Management/ Object-Oriented-Databases/index.htm by Sun Micro Systems, describes briefly over hundred such suites in SUN platforms. Microsoft seems to be planning to trump the others' Aces with their `MS BizTalk Server 2000', an XML based B2B server suite expected to be released late this year.

Let us hope that despite a belated entry and lack of support for W3C Schemata (New XML standards from the World Wide Web Consortium), the dominance of other MS products, aggressive pricing and marketing muscle will make it a force to reckon with. For a peek into Microsoft's gameplan in this area, refer to http://www.PlanetIT.com/docs/PIT20000414S0025. IBM has its `WebSphere server'. If one waits till a winner emerges, early bird advantages will be lost. These suits are not cheap by Indian standards.

As it can be noticed there are a wealth of opportunities for IT companies in site upgradations, training, preparations for B2B, customisations, solving specific compatibility issues, multi- lingual customisations and many other areas.

There is scope for new B2B related software products. Opportunities abound for becoming authorised solution providers and value added resellers for many international providers of technology. Application Service Providers (ASPs) will have their days too, hiring a new breed of expensive software suites for the use of software companies. This is over and above the opportunities for hosting B2B sites. B2B will also bring in its wake a lot of work for lawyers, accountants and other providers of non-technology based services.

Provision of commercial infrastructure in terms of areas such as broadbased corporate credit appraisal services, encryption key exchange services, Internet banking, EDP audit, site and security quality assurance, consultancy and a host of other related services will also receive a great boost in the wake of B2B e- commerce. Broadband communications such as DSL and cable services will see a great upsurge in demand. Wait till all froth is skimmed off. Paucity of serious and competent players will make the complex and demanding B2B site and support operations highly lucrative.

R. Mohanakrishnan

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