Technology Trends in e-Business

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1. Why is it important to keep abreast of technology trends when running an e-Business? What is a recent technology trend and how does it affect e-business. Goal is to understand different technology trends in e-business (see p. 4 of attached article - e_Business Trends.pdf). Would like references to do additional research.
Clearly, e-Business means more than a “neat” Web site or a “cool” collaboration environment. With emerging trends in e-Business many new tools and technologies have evolved that help e-Businesses develop, which is one reason why it is important for e-Businesses to keep abreast of technology trends, but also to keep up with the competition. The new technology trends improve the e-business on may levels (e.g., customer friendlier, etc.), which increases profitability http://www.mindtree.com/mls/ebusiness-trends.pdf.

At the end of the day, most people would agree that each organization would embark on e-Business initiatives that make sense for its particular situation. E-business still has to make business sense and should be judged by the same set of metrics and ROI calculations that any other initiative in an organization will be measured by. Technology will keep on evolving and each organization will decide its own route depending on the perceived benefit and the maturity of the technology. http://www.mindtree.com/mls/ebusiness-trends.pdf. In other words, don’t use technology just for the sake of keeping up with the trends; rather let the technological trends inform your business decisions based on your organizational needs (the attached article gives a good description of integrating TI into business goals and strategy.

Example 1:

The authors of the attached article explain how e-Business has gone through a number of changes in the past few years. Many enterprise companies were caught off-guard by the hype during the dotcom bubble and stumbled into it without fully understanding how best to harness the power of the related tools and technologies for their needs. Most organizations just plunged into e-Business emulating their competitors or thinking that by introducing some form of portal or e-commerce solution they will gain a competitive edge. What they have discovered is that e-Business still has to make sense as a business. A “neat” Web site or a “cool” collaboration environment is not going to be the main source of competitive advantage. Any e-Business initiative has to be tied to the overall business strategy of the organization and has to be driven by distinct set of objectives and measurement criteria.

See further details in the article (attached), which talks about how enterprises should gear up to adopt e-Business technologies and solutions and what some of the current e-Business trends explored (Also available online at http://www.mindtree.com/mls/ebusiness-trends.pdf, but is attached for convenience and in case the material is not longer made available on-line, p. ...