Recently one of our key members was invited to attend an event organised by IDC. The agenda was well presented and organised. It was a information rich event.

One very captivating and interesting take away is the mentioned of xCommerce. The same sentiment was echoed by TM's Business Strategy Manager, Rachel Leong.

IDC's definition of it is the process by which an order is placed or accepted via the internet, mobile service or social media representing a commitment for a transfer of funds in exchange for goods or services.

Ebay's definition is skewed to its own online tools. Ebay just gave two brief pointers, xCommerce is a Commerce based identification platform and is a platform for both merchant and developer to exists for co-development.

Market Size

Is it active?

Lets check out the eCommerce industry out there. Ebay has been extending its tentacles everywhere. Ebay own multiple websites which enable small- and medium-sized businesses to sell products and services online. Ebay also provides its merchants everything they need to set up, design, and manage a customizable virtual storefront at their own Internet domain.

Ebay owns the site xCommerce.com and in their slideshare it explains they are four megatrends that are changing commerce, namely mobile, social, digital and local. Forrester Research predicted the US online and Web-Influenced retail sales for 2014 are about USD$249 billion and USD$1.4 trillion.

Do you think it is active? I think we shall be active and be part of the xCommerce activity.

Which model is right for you?

Given its sizable market and great growth potential, what options do you have to take advantage of it?

Virtual storefront

• - Sells physical products directly to consumers or to individual businesses.

Information broker

• - Provides product, pricing, and availability information to individuals and businesses.

Transaction broker

• - Save users money and time by processing online sales transactions and generating a fee for each transaction.

Online Marketplace

• - Provides a digital environment where buyers and sellers can meet, search for products, display products and establish prices for those products.

Content provider

• - Creates revenue by providing digital content, such as digital news, music, photos or video over the web.

Social Network

• - Provides an online meeting place where people with similar intrest can communicate and find useful information.

Portal

• - Provides initial point of entry to the Web along with specialized content and other services.

Service Provider

• - Provides Web 2.0 applications such as photo sharing, video sharing, and user-generated contest as services.

What do you need to get started?

Forget about cloud services from AWS. Why am I saying that? It is too costly and risky in the long run. Many have stumbled with cloud from AWS. Netflix super site crashed on Christmas eve last year. How much does it lost? A cloud service is no different from a shared server. A shared server is very insecure.

It is better you invest in a dedicated server for better processing power and performance, better user experience, better security, and most importantly better protection of your customers' data.

You can get a 1U server with two XEON processors and runs at RAID 5 with SATA or SAS (recommended) as an entry point. If you have wish to have multiple websites, we can assist you to virtualize your server using Linux KVM for maximising usage of your resources. With this at anytime in the future you can create more virtual machines for your new websites.

Do not forget to get a SSL certificate for your site too. SSL Certificates have all the features you expect from an SSL Certificate like strong encryption and browser trust.

To cut costs in other software, you can always choose a Linux operating system, CentOS and a open source and feature rich control panel such as Webmin.

What else do you need to get started? Not much, just pick up the phone and call us at 03 8688 3850 or email us at Support

We will be delighted to assist to get you fly into xCommerce.