Innovations of the past few years provide an interesting hint at the future of e-commerce. Consider the following scenario:
A CIO of a retail company gets off the phone, sits back, and begins to read his new monthly retail systems contract. The days of dealing with large development teams, countless software products, integration, infrastructure and security are over. All of the systems required to operate a retail business live in a software cloud managed by a provider.
Every selling channel is integrated to the point where the systems platform behaves like one cohesive unit. Every interface into the platform is a Web page that looks, behaves and operates like a polished desktop application. Retail store employees, call center representatives, Web site users, catalog partners, merchandisers, fulfillments specialists, and business administrators use these centralized Web interfaces as their tools for interacting with retail systems. Requests for customizations and additional functionality are fulfilled in days.
Mobile devices retrieve and use information from the software cloud for a slew of functions and, most importantly, the cloud changes based on its understanding of the information moving through the business. The platform thinks, understands, and finds ways to sell more to customers. The entire IT infrastructure of a retail business is an intelligent software cloud with advanced Web interfaces that are accessed for a monthly fee.
