Perot Systems Corp. is a technology services and consulting firm based in Dallas, Texas. The company offers systems management, systems integration, customer relationship management, and e-commerce services to its enterprise clients, most of which operate in the financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing industries. Sales in 2000 exceeded $1 billion, and employees totaled roughly 7,500. Te…
No single person or institution can be credited with the advent of the personal computer (PC). Rather, the rise of the PC is due to the work of multiple individuals, government entities, and businesses. While Apple Computer Inc. and Microsoft Corp. played pivotal roles in developing PC operating systems, the microprocessors developed by Intel Corp. proved equally important, as did the actual PC la…
Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are handheld or pocket computers capable of a wide range of functions. At their most basic level, they serve as electronic address books and to-do lists. However, the capabilities of PDAs have evolved considerably since their introduction in the late 1980s to include wireless access to phone, fax, e-mail, the Internet and other subscription-based data services. U…
Personalization enables more intimate relationships between companies and their customers and is an effective tool for building brand loyalty. In it simplest form, personalization can involve Web site visitors creating personal profiles that outline the kinds of features or information they want to see. This usually requires the visitor to fill out an online questionnaire or survey. By providing a…
By the 21st century, photonics was on the cusp of unseating electronics as the optimal and revolutionary science underlying cutting-edge telecommunications and computing technology. The primary thrust of photonics research in the 1990s and early 2000s was toward the fiber-optic networking for use in telecommunications, particularly to accommodate rapidly escalating demand for Internet bandwidth. I…
A platform consists of the software and/or hardware that allows a computer system to run. Two of the most well-known personal computer (PC) platforms are DOS and Windows, both manufactured by Microsoft Corp. They typically run on microprocessors, such as the Pentium, developed by Intel Corp. Apple Computer Co.'s Macintosh system is another major PC platform, and UNIX is a well known platfor…
A Web portal, also known as a gateway, presents itself as a starting point for Internet users when they first connect to the Web. Portals have evolved from simple search engines to sites offerings a wide range of services. The leading portals in terms of traffic include America Online's AOL.com, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Network (MSN). All of the leading portals offer an integrated package of s…
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), one of the leading data encryption protocols, was launched in 1991 by cryptographer Philip Zimmerman, who founded Pretty Good Privacy Inc. around his encryption algorithm in 1996. PGP was designed to protect the civil liberties of those communicating over the Internet by utilizing a mathematical code, or algorithm, to scramble information in such a way that only authoriz…
From a consumer's point-of-view, it was a great concept, one that truly seemed to leverage the power of the Internet for the benefit of the consumer. The concept was deceptively simple: Let the consumer decide how much he or she would be willing to pay for an item, then find a business willing to match it. From a business point-of-view, though, there were many questions. How many airline co…
Although the pricing of products and services may appear to be simple at face value, there actually are many different dimensions to pricing in the business world. Pricing is a major component of any business strategy, online or otherwise, and companies take a variety of strategic approaches to pricing depending on their particular goals. The objectives of pricing can include everything from gaini…
Few Internet-related issues have generated as much controversy, conflict, and concern as privacy. The debate encompasses freedom of expression, security of intellectual property, marketers' abilities to gather information about consumers on the Web, workplace productivity, and rights of Internet users. Governments, industry, and citizen-advocacy groups are struggling to define workable priv…
Product management has played an important role in business strategy since the early 1930s. A product manager's job description can vary from organization to organization, but it typically includes overseeing many aspects of a product's life cycle, ranging from product creation and development to marketing and selling of the product. The advent of e-business during the 1990s added ye…
As the number of consumers shopping on the Web has increased, so has the number of online services available to these shoppers. For example, Shopping bots such as MySimon.com, Dealtime.com, and Shopping.com help consumers find the best deals on products. Site evaluation services like Bizrate.com and Gomez.com steer shoppers to reputable online merchants. BBB Online, the electronic arm of the Bette…
Online profiling generated heated opinions for both pro and con as e-commerce achieved prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A method by which online businesses trace browsing and shopping habits of Internet users and compile detailed information files for future marketing purposes, online profiling was seen at one and the same time as an invaluable marketing tool and an affront to Interne…
In order for computers to accept commands from humans and perform tasks vital to productivity and e-commerce, a means of communication must exist. Programming languages provide this necessary link between man and machine. Because they are quite simple compared to human language, rarely containing more than few hundred distinct words, programming languages must contain very specific instructions. T…
The Web represents a new marketing channel. Promoting the Web site is about giving people specific, tangible reasons to visit your Web site. These include service-oriented reasons, such as being able to track order status, review purchase history, and receive e-mail reminders, among others. Price-related reasons for visiting an e-commerce site include discounted merchandise and special sales. A si…
Qwest was one of the first companies to build a fiber-optic network for high-speed data communications that forms the backbone of the Internet and provides a key element of electronic commerce. After completing construction of its 18,500-mile national fiber-optic network in 1999, Qwest added 4,300 route miles in Canada and Mexico and continued to build fiber-optic rings in Europe. As of 2001 the c…
Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, RealNet-works Inc. offers Internet media delivery software and services. Its products allow computer users to send, receive, and view streaming media, including movie and video clips and audio programming, such as Internet radio broadcasts. In the early 2000s, RealNetworks offered several widely used software products including different versions of RealJukebo…
When the World Wide Web began to take off as a commercial marketplace, many of the first corporate Web sites were little more than static pages providing company information or product and service promotions. Because these sites essentially were electronic brochures, they sometimes were referred to as brochureware. By the early 2000s, e-commerce—and many supporting Internet-related technolo…
When consumers or businesses are billed regularly for services like Internet access, resulting in an automatic transfer of funds, a recurring billing transaction occurs. Recurring transactions can involve checking accounts or credit card accounts as the source from which funds are obtained. According to Credit Card Management, Visa indicated a 39-percent increase in recurring transactions during f…
The term resolution is used to describe the quality or sharpness of images that are displayed on computer monitors or printed onto pages. Generally speaking, low-resolution images are of a lesser quality than high-resolution images. Resolution is expressed differently, depending on whether an image appears on-screen or in print. The resolution of computer monitors is expressed in elements called p…
Many traditional brick-and-mortar enterprises have found it necessary to adopt some sort of e-business strategy as the Internet becomes an increasingly powerful venue for exchanging information, as well as for buying and selling products and services. According to market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC), Internet commerce is expected to reach $5 trillion by 2005, with over one billion …
Search engines are one of the most popular and widely used tools on the Web. When Internet surfers wish to locate something on the Web, they are more likely to use a search engine than any other method. After a user enters a search, most search engines utilize some formula for returning results that correspond with the user's search. The end result of this process is a results ranking, in w…
Joseph Ricketts is the founder and chairman of Ameritrade Corp., the fourth-largest Internet-based brokerage in the U.S. In addition to using the World Wide Web, Ameritrade clients may also complete trades via telephone and fax. After CEO Thomas Lewis resigned suddenly in August of 2000—in the wake of the dot.com fallout—Ricketts took over as interim CEO until March 2001, when Merril…
RSA Data Security pioneered and marketed the technology that makes it possible to communicate and transfer information and documents securely on the Internet and establish and authenticate the identity of virtual trading partners—developments essential to the widespread acceptance of electronic commerce. The technology could also be used to prevent snoopers from eavesdropping on cell phone…
