One of the world's largest software developers, Lotus Development Corp. operates as a subsidiary of computing giant IBM Corp. The firm is best known for its Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program and its Lotus Notes messaging system, which holds a 51 percent share of the e-mail software market, compared to the 27.7 percent held by Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange program. In 2001, after Lotus cut…
Loudcloud, Inc. was founded in September 1999 by some of the Internet's earliest innovators, including Netscape Communications Corp. co-founder Marc Andreessen and former Netscape and America Online (AOL) executive Ben Horowitz. Other members of the founding team included Tim Howes, who co-invented the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), which became the Internet standard for dire…
E-merchants, like merchants in traditional retailing, are interested not only in attracting new customers to their Web sites, but developing a base of loyal old customers who return to a site regularly. Web sites that inspire customer loyalty are said to be "sticky." The stickiest, most successful retail sites, such as Amazon.com, have shown that the characteristics that make a Web s…
Lucent Technologies Inc.'s core businesses involved the design, development, and manufacture of communications systems, software, and products. The company supplied public and private communication systems and software to most of the world's largest communications network operators and service providers. Since the time it was formed in 1995 as part of AT&T's restructuri…
For companies engaging in e-commerce, down-time can mean missed business opportunities, lost revenue, and compromised customer service. The costs are significant; according to Business Communications Review, the Infonetics Research WAN Down-time Study put annual costs of wide area network problems at almost $8 million for organizations with more than 1,000 employees. Management Service Providers (…
Alex J. Mandl served as the CEO of Teligent, Inc., a Virginia-based telecommunications upstart, from August 1996 to April 2001. He left his post as president and COO of AT&T Corp. to head up the new competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), which uses its own high-frequency microwave and broadband SmartWave networks to offer local and long-distance phone services, Internet access, World Wi…
Connectivity is what gives the Internet its power. Ever since consumers widely adopted the World Wide Web, new possibilities have existed for buying and selling goods and services. Companies that already sold products directly to consumers gained another channel for doing so, and companies that relied on wholesalers and distributors to sell their products via different retail outlets suddenly were…
Market research is a tool used by businesses of all kinds to assist with decisions regarding things like product development, marketing campaigns, expansion efforts, pricing, and even overall strategy. The world's largest market researcher, AC Nielsen Corp., is best known for its Nielsen ratings, which provide information regarding a television show's viewers. Advertisers quite often…
Internet marketing is the practice of using the Internet as a medium for a marketing campaign. An Internet marketing campaign can involve several different types of advertisements, including the banner bars that formed of core of online advertising efforts in the late 1990s, a newsletter distributed via e-mail, an interactive pop-up window, links to one World Wide Web site from another, and a Web …
A marketing plan is a key component of a business plan, a document written by an individual or group of individuals interested in launching a new business. Creating a marketing plan allows new business owners to understand their customer base, determine exactly how products or services will meet the needs of a customer base, and devise promotional and sales strategies to target that specific marke…
The prevalence of customized goods has waned since the industrial revolution in favor of mass-produced goods, and for good economic reasons. Since industrial technology allowed for the mass production of virtually identical goods, the input costs for each unit declined, allowing firms to allocate their resources more efficiently via mass production rather than paying the extra cost per unit involv…
Andrew McKelvey is the founder, chairman, and CEO of TMP Worldwide, the world's largest seller of yellow page ads. TMP is also owner and operator of Monster.com, the number one job placement World Wide Web site and one of the 100 most visited Web sites. With sales of more than $1 billion and earnings of nearly $57 million, online recruitment powerhouse TMP is also a top recruitment advertis…
Scott McNealy is the founder and CEO of Sun Microsystems Inc., the world's largest network computing firm. Sun's Java programming language and network servers account for most of its $14 billion in annual sales. Known for his declaration in the late 1980s that "the network is the computer," McNealy is considered one of the world's most important figures in the de…
A merchant is a business—or in terms of e-commerce, a Web site—that accepts credit or debit cards in exchange for goods or services. In order to accept credit cards as a method of payment, a merchant must first establish a merchant account by forming a relationship with an acquiring financial institution (or "acquiring bank"). This relationship enables the merchant to p…
The merchant model of e-commerce involves the establishment of an electronic storefront on the World Wide Web, an information-technology infrastructure capable of receiving and processing orders, appropriate security measures to assure the safety, secrecy, and authenticity of transaction information, and means for procuring payments—either online or in the physical world—and completi…
The rapid growth of dot.com upstarts in the latter half of the 1990s proved a fertile breeding ground for mergers and acquisitions. For example, between 1996 and 1997 the number of Internet service providers (ISPs) in operation skyrocketed from roughly 1,500 to nearly 4,000. Because smaller ISPs were able to serve local markets less expensively than larger rivals, the top contenders in the U.S. IS…
The Internet is a giant network of many smaller computer networks throughout the world. Its power and value stems from the fact that it connects millions of people. As more organizations and individuals use the Internet, the cost to access it decreases and more funds are invested that ultimately advance Internet technologies and infrastructure. If only a few people had access to the connections th…
Micro-payments are online transactions of low value, ranging from several pennies to approximately $10.00. Micro-payments are commonly used to pay for downloads of newspaper articles, electronic books, music clips, or software, but could be used for virtually any low-priced item for sale on the Internet. Because the cost of accepting credit cards for small purchases is prohibitively expensive, som…
Microprocessors are silicon chips that contain a computer's central processing unit (CPU)—the device that executes commands entered into the computer. Along with clocks and main memory, CPUs are among a computer's main components. The terms CPU and microprocessor often are used interchangeably. Essentially, microprocessors are responsible for manipulating data and performing n…
Microsoft Corp. is the world's largest software firm, with annual sales of roughly $23 billion and more than 39,000 employees. Its Windows operating system boasts a worldwide personal computer (PC) market share of 92 percent. The firm's word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software suite known as Microsoft Office brings in roughly $9 billion each year—more than any o…
The Microsoft Network—MSN for short—is an online service owned by the Microsoft Corporation. MSN.com is a multi-service web portal, comparable to America Online (AOL) or Yahoo, which offers a number of free features to surfers of the Web, including email from Hotmail, news from MSNBC and Newsweek magazine, a variety of financial and shopping services, and MSN Web Communities, a netwo…
In the early 2000s, Microsoft Windows was the dominant operating system for home and business computer users. Operating systems (OS) are programs responsible for running computers. In addition to Windows, other OS in the 2000s included Linux, Unix, and Macintosh. Microsoft Windows provides users with a graphical environment, meaning that it allows them to issue commands to a computer by clicking o…
In the corporate world, companies often operate using a patchwork of different computer systems across various departments or divisions, in which they have invested considerable resources over the years. Many of these systems and software applications weren't designed for use on the World Wide Web. However, in order to engage in e-commerce companies must find a way to enable them for this p…
In its most primitive, text-only form, e-mail is a powerful communications tool for both businesses and consumers. The ability to add picture, audio, and video attachments makes it even more powerful—especially for e-marketers. Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) allow these many different kinds of files to be exchanged online. MIME is an extension of the Simple Mail Transfer Prot…
For companies that rely on the Internet to generate revenue, obtain new customers and investors, and maintain or build relationships with existing customers and investors, slow connections and crashes can spell disaster. Mirror sites are cloned or alternate versions of the same Web site. Companies that receive heavy traffic often create mirror sites to resolve potential problems caused by excess d…
