Value Creation from E-Business Models

15

Building out the Web services architecture: the challenge of software applications integration

Wendy L. Currie

15.1 Introduction

The economic downturn of the last few years has witnessed the demise of thousands of dot.com or Internet businesses worldwide (Cassidy, 2002). Despite the promises of value creation from e-Business, the digital economy (Department of Commerce, 1999) and the networked society (Castells, 2000), e-Business models have been poorly designed and executed (Quinn-Mills, 2001). If we remind ourselves of the ‘hype’ which surrounded e-Business in the recent past, the ‘irrational exuberance’ which suggested that ‘If you’re not an e-Business, you’re out of business!’. This led many established firms in the technology sector ...