Web Content Management - High-Performance Web Databases: Design, Development, and Deployment - page 97

E-BUSINESS AND DISAGGREGATION
With the advent of transacting business over the Internet — a.k.a. B2B
e-Business — the internal focus of many enterprises is quickly shifting. The
ability to communicate and collaborate over the Internet, irrespective of
geographic proximity, has been recognized by many early adopters of tech-
nology. They are using this aggressively for competitive advantage. This is
forcing most organizations to shift their attention externally. They must
address the external processes involving suppliers, partners, and possibly
the customers.
The Internet is enabling many organizations to disaggregate along the
value chain. The walls are coming down. Those internal components of
large conglomerates that are primarily dealing with structured data and
have the necessary IT tools to support their particular function are able to
divorce the inefficient conglomerates and create a value proposition of their
own. It is possible that during the next few years one could see the disaggre-
gation of most high value-added functional units from the large conglomer-
ates, leaving them with only the low value-added components. Another pos-
sible scenario is that all of the low value-added components or business
processes will be outsourced to external business process providers.
There is an abundance of newly created organizations, offering a pleth-
ora of new services — in particular, business process outsourcing services.
An example of this is the e-Procurement enterprise recently announced by
Chase Manhattan and Deloitte Consulting. Most early adopting organiza-
tions of the disaggregated enterprise model are ones that deal primarily
with structured data. They are supported by the required IT systems and
infrastructure. These organizations will be subject to external market
forces and therefore, in all probability, will offer far more efficient and effec-
tive service than an internal business process provider. The disaggregated
component entities will be able to team with other providers of the most
effective and efficient business processes, thereby collectively creating
higher value for customers.
These early adopters should not be confused with some of the more
careless players in this new market. There are other newly created entities
taking up positions on the value chain. These entities may also deal prima-
rily with structured data; however, they have not made the requisite invest-
ment in the necessary IT applications and infrastructure. These are some
of the pure play .coms that have never earned a cent of profit, and will
either learn or be obliterated by the natural market forces.
The more responsible component organizations mentioned above — the
quick movers — are the entities that deal primarily with structured data
and are already supported by the necessary IT systems and infrastructure.
Because of the speed with which these entities have been able to move into