Towards electronic commerce via science park multi-Extranets

This paper is devoted to examining of the new emerging area of the Internet use, namely, 'Extranets'. This is often referred as a 'third wave' of the universal Internet. Definitions and examples of Extranet are given. Extranets are compared with better known intergroupware and the concepts of Communications, Collaboration, and Co-ordination are illustrated. The notion of a multi-Extranet is introduced as a special case typically found in the Science Park (SP) environments. Three types of organizations using the facilities of the SP and having different relationships with its multi-Extranet are distinguished as follows: (a) 'normal' firms which will have their own Intranets and access to the Internet either on their own or via SP facilities; (b) 'small' firms, which will obtain access to the Internet via SP facilities and with the only Intranet, which will be actually Extranet; (c) 'large' firms which, perhaps, will not bother to connect to the SP facilities at all. Open application standards are discussed and a suite of standards supported by the consortium established by Netscape Communications is briefly presented. The roles of network management and associated security issues are outlined as crucial for the success of electronic commerce. The existing experience of running Intranets is discussed and accepted as applicable for Extranets and criteria are identified for choosing a planning strategy for the building of Extranets. Based on the existing experience, the 'top 5'' problems have been identified such as Internal Information Exchange, Discussions, Line-of-Business Applications, Collaborations and Link to Partners. Typical cost items are identified and cost models are discussed for the cases such as cost of running Web-sites of various complexity, access expenses for mobile users/workers (via mobile telephones and ISDN connections) as well as losses caused by the downtime. Two typical phases for the building of an Extranet are suggested: (1) is focusing on the applications and standards which will help to solve the above mentioned 'top 5' problems, and (2) is devoted to future development of the Extranet and 'flourishing' of the links with the customers as well as electronic commerce facilities.