Amazon and eBay : The New Face of Web Services

Amazon is a Fortune 500 e-commerce company based in Seattle, WA. It is one of the top companies that sells the most goods over the internet.

Web technologies are one of the last components to an IT system. It connects the company to the World Wide Web. A company may utilize it to service clients where they use the interface or it could be used by the company to input client information. Web technology can be used as a way of staying connected with multiple people at once. Web technology also can help a company save, transfer, and download information that has been saved into a cloud.

A web server is a PC that opens pages on a browser on request. It sends the web address of the page that has been requested to the web browser. They have an IP address and possibly domains and are essential for an ecommerce because ecommerce is online and a web server is what you need to surf the web.

Web hosting services – this is where a user will buy a certain amount of storage space on a company’s network, which will then be visible to the public through a IP address, and store their website files so a third user can visit the website. This allows users to view the website by downloading packets of information.

As a modular, self-describing type of software service, Web services are self-contained applications that can be:

“The mail server is a server that stores and manages electronic messages (email) among users. If you are using Microsoft email products, you will be using Microsoft Exchange to act as your mail server, and you would most likely access the email using Microsoft Outlook or a web browser” (MOAC, 2011) . Having web services is ideal, as well. “Using a web server to provide web services means that users can access web pages using their browsers. These web services may be used to do research, provide leads for sales, allow customers to purchase goods and services, and provide customer support over the Internet. Web services may also be used to provide an easy method to access databases, run reports, track sales leads, provide customer support, and even help you with payroll and human resources” (MOAC,

Learned about different conventions to impart between the customer and servers and the techniques to be utilized as a part of correspondence such as doGet (),doPost (),doService () and so forth.

The major factors which lead to the investment on the web enablement were the employee self service, communication and the distance learning, the customer self service, net commerce, executive information system and the major decision support system. These were the major reason for carrying out the big investment. The employee service had the majority of the internal application related to web enabled. The other was on the basis of the use of corporate intranet which carry out the need of the 40000 employees of the company.

In this chapter, we will discuss the historical background on the objectives of Web services and security,and it will be touched upon the other subjects such us Confidentiality, integrity, authenticity services, authentication methods, Zero-Knowledge Proof protocols, and Diffie-Hellman key exchange is also discussed.

It supports web services that align with continuous growth opportunities, expanded customer relationships, and ability to cross-sell between the divisions.

Amazon is using different operating models to provide products and service to customers. There are three distinct models that Amazon.com offers, each with a different supply chain. The three models are Amazon.com as seller, Amazon.com as intermediary, and Amazon.com as full-service e- commerce provider.

Microsoft’s internet information services (IIS) is one such solution. This webs server is designed to run on Windows server platforms. Consequently, it integrates well with Microsoft’s online applications. It features an intuitive graphical user interface that simplifies its installation and use. However, the costs of installing new versions of this web server are high. In addition, its restriction to the Microsoft server OS platform inhibits system flexibility. An alternative to IIS is the Apache web server. This is an open sourced application that can be implemented on a wide variety of operating system platforms. Apache’s integration of a pearl and PHP engine facilitates easy integration with the application programming interface (Gunther, 2006). In addition, this web server is available for free. This makes it a cost effective alternative. Further, Apache’s event-driven architecture enables it to perform ideally even under heavy loads. However, Apache usage involves a relatively strenuous learning curve. The software’s complexity may present an obstacle to its use by new users. Another web server that can be adopted for use in this project is Nginx. This server is easy to use as well as stable. It is also based on an event driven architecture. This architecture makes it an efficient user of system resources even under heavy loads (Tanenbaum, 2001). Nginx’s ease of installation, configuration, and use make it a viable alternative for adoption in

(3) Web Services in the Cloud - instead of delivering full applications, this service allows users to access APIs for added functionality.

In 2000, Amazon and Toys-R-Us entered into a symbiotic agreement that would benefit both corporate entities. Both companies had recently had unimpressive fiscal years due to differing issues. Toys “R” Us struggled with poor order fulfillment. Although they were equipped with enough merchandise, other issues kept them from being able to get orders to customers in a timely manner; especially during the busy holiday season. Conversely, Amazon was forced to write off $34 million because of a miscalculation in inventory and had orders that could not be honored (Ouchi, 2004). Following these debacles, both organizations felt that joining

Electronic Commerce has become such a massive and wide field of business, research and development that it even poured into the service based applications of emerging electronic commerce systems that are available anytime, anywhere on personally computing systems i.e. Smartphone (Mahmoud Manafi, 2011).