Electronic commerce (e-commerce) and electronic business (e-business) are vital to business. E-commerce is one of the core courses in the management information systems (MIS) curriculum. It explains the business practices in the information technology era. The course also introduces the tools that can be applied to e-commerce project development. Information technology has become a commodity, and the e-commerce course has become a widely accepted business elective course forall business majors.The objective of this textbook is to help business students understand the concept of e-commerce and e-business and develop practical skills of e-commerce project development. Upon completion of the course, students will understand e-commerce and e-business, and be able to develop an e-commerce project. This resource was supported by funding from the OER Creator Program at UMass Dartmouth. 

Information Technology I helps students understand technical concepts underlying current and future developments in information technology. There will be a special emphasis on networks and distributed computing. Students will also gain some hands-on exposure to powerful, high-level tools for making computers do amazing things, without the need for conventional programming languages. Since 15.564 is an introductory course, no knowledge of how computers work or are programmed is assumed.

The course purpose is to provide the substance and skill necessary to make sound business decisions relating to information systems and to work with senior line managers in the resolution of issues and problems in this area. Categories of issues which will be addressed in the course include:

How do IT and its various manifestations in business, such as the Internet, affect current and future COMPETITIVENESS? How do we align business strategy and plans with IT strategy and IT plans?
How can we ENGAGE executives in learning and leading IT-related change?
How do we IMPLEMENT new systems, CHANGE work behavior, MANAGE projects?
How should we ORGANIZE and GOVERN IT in an organization?

This course covers how to leverage major technology advances to significantly transform a business in the marketplace. There is a focus on major issues a business must deal with to transform its technical and market strategies successfully, including the organizational and cultural aspects that often cause such business transformations to fail. Class material draws from concrete experiences of IBM’s major transformation in the late 1990s, when it aggressively embraced the Internet and came up with its e-business strategy.

§Define e-commerce and describe how it differs from e-business§Identify the unique features of e-commerce technology and their business significance§Describe the major types of e-commerce§Understand the visions and forces behind the 1st E-Commerce era