e-Commerce and Cloud Computing: A Survey

Abstract

The fast development of telecommunications technology in the past few decades is changing many aspects of our lives – how we search for information, how we travel and not at least how we buy products or services. Although classic shop-based retail is still preferred, e-commerce or electronic commerce or online shopping, namely the buying and selling of products and services exclusively through electronic channels, is gaining popularity. ECommerce in India is one of the fast growing sectors of India’s Digital Economy.One of the pioneers of the Indian IT Industry, Mr. Narayan Murthy recently announced that he would partner with Amazon India to launch a joint venture to create a new e-commerce entity for the Indian Market. The key factors driving the growth story of e-Commerce in India include:Considerable rise in the number of internet users, growing acceptability of online payments, Proliferation of internet-enabled devices and Favorable demographics. But, the phenomenal growth of the e-Commerce sector is accompanied by certain challenges like Absence of e-Commerce laws, Low entry barriers leading to reduced competitive advantages, rapidly changing business models, urban phenomenon, Shortage of manpower, and Customer loyalty. Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This paper brings to light the growth, advantages of e-Commerce with relevance to cloud computing.