SciQuest.com's B2B E-Marketplace

The Technology Contd...

The WebSphere Commerce Suite gave SciQuest the flexibility to employ more advanced technologies, such as JSPs and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs)¹¹, while simultaneously supporting existing technology applications such as those developed using Net.Data. This helped the company to deploy new applications and build more functionality without replacing existing infrastructure. The WebSphere Commerce Suite solution was connected to SciQuest's back-office order processing and financial reporting applications using the MQSeries¹². The MQSeries helped SciQuest to dramatically reduce development time, integrating its internal enterprise-wide applications as well as supplier back-end systems with front-end web transactions.

To protect its critical information from unauthorized access over the web, SciQuest used an eNetwork firewall¹³. Once the B2B e-marketplace was fully in place, customers could, by logging on to the site with a user name and password, conduct product searches, compare prices and make purchases (See Exhibit II).

Individual purchase orders were made for each vendor, the customer's credit status was checked and the account history was updated. Soon, SciQuest user sessions increased significantly, reaching more than 100,000 per month in October 1999. As the order management system was not designed to handle this kind of traffic, SciQuest began facing problems in handling the orders.

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11] Java beans are portable, reusable Java software components. EJBs extend the Java bean concept from the client domain to the server domain. EJBs enable the usage of Java technology into a robust, scalable environment that can support mission-critical enterprise information systems.

12] MQ Series provides the base messaging service for servers and clients.

13] A system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network. Firewalls can be implemented in both hardware and software, or a combination of both. They are frequently used to prevent unauthorized Internet users from accessing private networks connected to the Internet, especially intranets. All messages entering or leaving the intranet pass through the firewall, which examines each message and blocks those that do not meet the specified security criteria.

Case Details

Case Code : ITSY008
Themes: Internet Companies
Case Length : 09 Pages
Period : 1990-2001
Organization : SciQuest.com
Pub Date : 2002
Teaching Note : Available
Countries : USA
Industry : Information Technology (Electronic Commerce)

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