RE: E-Commerce

["Bleddyn Williams" <bleddyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dan the great thing about using your AS/400 for the Internet is that it
comes with all the things you need to get on line for free. If you want to
build an order enquiry process look at Net.Data is the now for getting
solutions up and running if you want visit http://www.ignite400.org to see
lots of examples of the sorts of things it can do. You also have the option
of looking at servlets and Websphere with which to build your interfaces
again samples are at the site of what it can do. If you get your 150 up to
V430 you also get the best available webserver for free IBM's HTTP server
built into the OS/400 as 5769DG1.

If you are looking to build an order entry system you may also want to
consider taking a look at Net.Commerce (not free but not expensive)
depending on what you sell and then interface that back into your existing
applications. Its now a very good product and gives you the ability to
provide an online store for either Business to Business or Business to
Consumer processing.

Thanks
Bleddyn

http://www.ignite400.org/ your AS/400 Internet/Intranet questions answered.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
[mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Dan Thomas
Sent: Friday, March 12, 1999 05:25
To: 'midrange-l@midrange.com'; 'JBAUSERS-L@midrange.com'
Subject: E-Commerce


        We are interested in giving existing customers the ability to order
products and check on order / shipment status via the Internet.  I would
expect our volume to initially be about 25 new orders per day and 50 order
inquiries (this is a small percent of our total volume).  I have a feeling
many of our customers will prefer to place their order via the telephone but
would use the system for order inquiries.

        We are running JBA V3.5.0 on our AS/400 620 V4R2 along with multiple
NT servers on our LAN / WAN.   We also have a AS/400 150 V4R2 which is
currently not being used.   Our network is already connected to the Internet
with a firewall.

        I don't consider any of the JBA screens to be user friendly enough
for the casual user, nor would they have any logic for restricting customers
to only seeing information pertaining to them, so I don't think 5250
emulation or GUI'd/Java screen scraper version of existing screens would be
of much value.  For order entry, I would envision using a separate Internet
Order Entry application that we would feed into our system as if it had been
received as an ANSI X.12 850 Purchase Order (phase 1) and phase 2 load the
orders online with immediate inventory allocation, credit checking, etc.
Ability to handle credit cards would be a real plus.  Obviously this
application would have to receive downloaded items/prices from our JBA
system.   For order / shipment status inquiries I would prefer to have an
application developed that would access our JBA files online.  An option
would be to download this information on some schedule to another
application/server if there was a good package available already for order
status inquiries.

        We are in the exploratory stage.  We don't have much inhouse
expertise with E-Commerce and I'm considering hiring someone to handle that
for us.

        Any suggestions for tools and packages to help us attain our goals?
TIA.

Dan Thomas
Sr. VP Information Systems
Medical Distribution, Inc.
4500 Progress Blvd
Louisville, KY  40218-5058
Phone (502) 454-9013 ext 120
email  DThomas@lpw-mdi.com

+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator:
david@midrange.com
+---

+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---