E-Commerce Servers and Back-End Integration: A Case-Based Comparison of Commercial Wholesaling and Retailing Software

With the growing importance of E-Commerce, commercially available E-Commerce servers are increasingly gaining ground. Our research investigates two of the most commonly implemented products, IBM's Net.Commerce (NC) and Microsoft's Site Server Commerce (SSC) Edition. After a short description of the two systems, this paper introduces the case of the shoe wholesaler ROHDE, for which prototypes of both systems have been implemented and investigated. Although our case is business-to-business, the findings are also applicable to the business-to-consumer segment. The ROHDE specific comparison investigates the implementation appropriateness and feasibility of both systems in the light of ROHDE's business requirements. It focuses on the integration of the servers with the installed back-end system. Our findings are summarized and directions for further research are given in the concluding section.