Challenging Issues

The impact of the e-commerce/e-Business market force has initiated rapid development in terms of the technology advancement and public/professional awareness. A pace of rapid progress in practice can be achieved and sustained only if the “inertia” issues are resolved surrounding the development of web applications, deployment of web applications to form enterprise portals, and operation of web applications to support business activities. This chapter attempts to identify some of these limiting issues while their solutions are yet to be explored by both the research and practitioner communities in the near future. Some of the questions that will be addressed in this chapter include: Are changes in business operations necessary?When and where web applications are applied most effectively and efficiently?Computation shared between the server and the clientInteractivity and securityConvert existing legacy systems into web-based on the internetChoose appropriate web applicationsDecision traceabilityIndividual versus common working memoriesCollaborative workflow managementSynchronous versus asynchronousDifficulties in web application developmentBusiness models of digital enterprisesInformation overflowEnterprise portal servers