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A Manager's Guide
reviewed by Charlie Morris
Those two prolix professors are at it again. Hot on the heels of their 850-page cinderblock, Frontiers of Electronic Commerce, Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B. Whinston have written Electronic Commerce: A Manager's Guide, half the length of the previous tome, but equally pedagogic and verbose.
January 6, 1998
Everyone defines "electronic commerce" differently, but Kalakota and Whinston give it the broadest definition I've seen. In the introduction, they define "electronic commerce" as (among other things): "...the delivery of information, products/services, or payments via telephone lines, computer networks or any other means." In other words, almost anything to do with computers or the Internet. Electronic Commerce: A Manager's Guide covers Internet service providers, the history of the Web, directories and search engines, and various Web technologies including HTML, CGI, Java, VRML, RealAudio, and much more. Closer to the main subject matter, there is a good bit of information about firewalls, encryption, transaction security, and electronic payment systems. There are detailed assesments of how electronic commerce is affecting banking, retailing, publishing, supply-chain management, manufacturing, and corporate finance.
One strength of this book is that for each of the preceding subjects, it discusses not only theory, but the actual situation in the industry at the time of writing. Major players in electronic commerce are identified, and their strengths and weaknesses assessed. This book gives the big picture, without going into much technical detail. As the title implies, it's for managers who want to get a handle on the new technologies affecting their business, not for Web developers wanting to build commercial sites.
A portion of this book is just repetition of material that appeared in Frontiers of Electronic Commerce, but most of it is new, and extends rather than reiterates the material from the previous book.
Just like the previous volume, there's good information here, but a lot of filler to slog through. The book reads like a research paper that was required to be a certain number of words. Every assertion is backed up by closely-reasoned logic, in a hierarchical outline form, with flow charts and the works. It's difficult to imagine what sort of person would sit down and read this one cover to cover, but if you're not afraid to jump around, you'll find some valuable nuggets here.
Electronic Commerce
By Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B. Whinston
1996
431 Pages
ISBN# 0-201-88067-9
Published by:
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
1 Jacob Way
Reading, MA 01867
(617) 944-3700
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