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E-Commerce and E-Business

related applications to the public, thereby facilitating information access and communication in an easy
and reliable way. This enhances the performance at work, education, and entertainment. The initiative
for NII and the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) was taken up by the US government.
An intranet is a network within an organization, which is similar to the Internet and helps in sharing
information, communication, and supporting business processes. An intranet uses the Internet
technologies such as Web browsers, servers, TCP/IP network protocols, HTML publishing, and so on.
An intranet is a private network with a similar network interface as the Internet. It consists of many
linked local area networks and is connected to the Internet.
Extranet is an extension of the intranet and allows access to customers and users outside the company.
Extranet allows a company to provide services to outside users.
The Internet, extranet, and intranet are all different types of networks. All three serve a common
purpose of connecting a group of people in a network. All three of them allow data to be uploaded into
a network and downloaded from a network. The Internet, extranet, and intranet use software and
hardware to share data between users who have access to the network. The figure 5.1 represents the
extranet-intranet-Internet relationship.

Figure 5.1: Extranet-Intranet-Internet Relationship

The way of accessing the Internet, intranet, and extranet may differ from one user to another. An
important issue in any organization for network administrators is access. To implement proper access,
network administrators must know who has authorization to the Internet, intranet, and extranet. The
organizational decision makers must be conversant with policy issues to make sure that unauthorized
people do not gain access to the confidential information of the organization.
5.1 Intranet and Extranet for E-Commerce
Electronic commerce or e-commerce deals with a wide range of online business activities for products
and services. It involves any form of business transaction in which the parties interact electronically
rather than by direct physical contact. E-Commerce includes conducting both internal and external
business over the Internet, intranet and extranet. It includes buying and selling of goods and services,
transfer of funds and simplification of business processes through computer-mediated networks. E-
Commerce enables the interaction between a supplier and a manufacturer, customers and sales
representatives, and carriers with distributors. E-Commerce applications can be classified as B2C, B2B,
C2B, and so on.
The e-commerce exchange transactions include information sharing that supports business transactions.
This includes all transactions internal to the business organizations and the external transactions with
customers and government agencies. It also integrates the electronic business (e-business). E-Business
deals with the use of the Internet and digital technology for managing the business processes internal to
the organization.

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