Introduction
E-business tends to offer an extensive dimension of e-commerce. It represents the utilization of information technology alongside web technology and other network technology, solely for the purpose of business. E-business represents a variety of processes and tools (online) that change the proposition of a company’s value (Tassabehji 19).
It is achieved by utilizing data-warehousing. It helps in the targeting of customers more effectively alongside a backbone network to aid in the linking of companies/businesses with distributors, suppliers and other business partners. Also linked is flexibility within an organizational infrastructure that acclimatizes to change.
Secondly, e-business paves way for companies to partake as pieces of the puzzle to a larger network community of suppliers and providers. Each electronic business can table a set of specialized skills and newer levels of performance to the e-market place (Tassabehji 73).
Some of the advantages of e-business/e-commerce are
- In e-commerce, there is a quicker selling/buying procedure as well as an easy way of locating and reviewing products
- It has better quality of services with low operational costs
- An e-business, it is easy to set up and manage the business
- There is practically no need for setting up of a physical company
- There is a wider casting of customers’ net with no theoretical geographical limitations
- It has a wide range of products from various providers and customers don’t need to move around physically
Some disadvantages are
- Potential haven for scam artists to setup shops and business
- There is close to zero guarantee of the quality of products sold
- The e-commerce payment channels and gateways are prone to attack by hackers if not well secured
Alibaba (Overview)
The Alibaba e-business is privately owned by Hangzhou. Their sole business objective involves coverage of business-to-business on an e-market place.
They also cover payment platforms, retailing, and data centric cloud computing services and shopping oriented search engines. The main objectives of Alibaba’s services and products designs is to pave way to the benefits of online accessibility to consumers, small businesses and entrepreneurs (Liu and Avery 27).
Alibaba got its name from one Jack Ma (CEO of Alibaba). It is said Jack Ma was in a coffee shop in San Francisco when the idea came to him after a waitress approached him. He asked her what she knew about Alibaba. “Open sesame,” she replied.
This triggered the urge to Ma Yun to perceive what others thought about the name Alibaba. Ma Yun went to the streets and asked about 30 people on their understanding of the word Alibaba. They all knew about Alibaba – Open sesame. It’s believed that Alibaba is a kind and helpful small business person that helps the villagers.
Background
Alibaba.com was founded by Jack Ma alongside 17 other co-founders. It is also a flagship company for the Alibaba Group. It is believed to have an estimate of over 5 million virtual stores and over 40 million users. This progress as witnessed is enough to say that Alibaba has climbed to the top as being among the most valuable online e-commerce organizations in China.
Primarily, Alibaba acts to serve an almanac of Chinese based manufactures (Liu and Avery 42). It helps connect the manufactures to other business or companies looking for suppliers on a global scale. As Alibaba continues to hold the Chinese market as its one and only first customer base, it also operates on a world wide scale.
Its international market place is entirely in English. This is personalized to both exporters and importers in China while Alibaba’s second market place, the Chinese market place focuses on buyers and suppliers who trade on a domestic scale.
Technology
The utilization of information technology and electronic technology has made e-commerce what it is today. While offering a global scale market place for manufacturers, suppliers, retailers (sellers) and buyers, all this is credited to the availability of technology capable to facilitate this form of business (e-business).
The fundamental technology behind e-commerce is the communication technology infrastructure. The internet has played the vital role and is the backbone to this online industry.
In addition, the internet infrastructure and related technology all contribute to the existence and prevalence of online market places (Gallaugher 269). The major technological aspects that enable the existence and prevalence of e-commerce are outlined below:
Security
As discussed earlier that e-commerce may be a haven for potential scam artists and hackers. It is vital that all honest participants are secured from such people. Threats such as identity theft, fraud, denial of service and industrial espionage can be available, with lack of adequate security measures. The online payment methods and fund transfers are expected to be very secure.
The reason being the fact that all participants e.g. suppliers, buyers, sellers or manufactures, can have an alias name to operate on the website. However, there is no use of alias names during fund transfer from one party to another. PayPal is among the most widely and secure means of funds transfer through business entities. For Alibaba, Alipay is their default payment option.
The reason is that China has the majority users of Alibaba.com with an estimate of 70% ownership. However, Alipay is not that famous from an international perspective. This has led international Alibaba operators to prefer PayPal as an alternative.
PayPal is globally known as the default mode of funds transfer due to trust of its security features. However, there are other alternatives to online transactions to countries that do not offer Alipay and PayPal services.
Additionally, security aspects such as encryption of information are vital for Alibaba. There is also use of passwords and usernames to enhance security on Alibaba.com.
Search Engines
A web search engine is a tool designed to search for data or information on the web. The most common search engines are; Google, Microsoft Bing, Ask and AOL. However, e-businesses such as Alibaba have a dedicated search engine. It is used to search through their data base for products or services offered by others. Additionally, users can search for manufacturers, suppliers, sellers and even buyers of commodities.
By use of the search engine, consumers can look for services or products that they desire. All the information displayed represents the actual goods and services available on Alibaba’s databases. Users can browse the search results to locate what they want or need in Alibaba.com.
Database and Data Warehousing: All Alibaba.com users and businesses are stored on databases. Their respective information, services and products, are accessed through the search engine on the site. Even buyers have accounts that they can enlist several items and add them to an online cart.
The cart holds the items to be bought temporarily until their shopping session is closed. As for the Data warehousing, all gathered information about Alibaba can be used in the analysis of Alibaba performance on a market and business perspective.
Alibaba.com Future
It’s with no doubt that Alibaba is among the leading, if not the top International Chinese online company. Its English based B2B website has international suppliers and buyers everywhere. Nonetheless, before Alibaba made it on the international markets, they had to succeed locally.
After Alibaba recovered from their near bankruptcy in the year 2000 (after they had opted to go into the international scale) they reverted to focus on their domestic market place China. Up to date, China is the number one source of annual revenue for Alibaba.
Even though, Alibaba is performing on the international scale with over 20 million registered international users over the last decade, China still remains its number one market venture. In an effort to exploit mobile telephone business potential, Alibaba has a cellphone or mobile operating system.
The mobile operating system is dubbed Aliyun. The operating system is said to incorporate cloud computing services (AliCloud) for Alibaba users. In addition to this, Alibaba also has a wide collection of mobile based applications on Android, Symbian and iPhones. Alibaba currently owns a domain Aliyun.com.
This is perceived as a future investment and venture into the cellular phone potential from a business point of view. Aliyun shall be a setup for the dedicated developer oriented platform for all Alibaba application software, operation systems and their AliCloud systems. Alibaba cloud platform will not only be a business market place but also a games center (Liu and Avery 52).
Works Cited
Gallaugher, John. Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology, Version 1.3. S.l.: Flat World Knowledge, 2011. Print.
Liu, Shiying, and Martha Avery. Alibaba: The Inside Story behind Jack Ma and the Creation of the World’s Biggest Online Market Place. New York: Collins Business, 2009. Print.
Tassabehji, Rana. Applying E–Commerce in Business. London: Sage Publications, 2003. Print.