There is no easy recipe for making a commercial Web site, ready for e-commerce. In fact, it is quite difficult to nail down the basics--- such as identifying the technological ingredients you need, where to find them, how to evaluate them and in some cases how much they reasonably should cost from an industry perspective.

CMCg e-Solutions has provided this list of key steps to help you understand the e-business foundation, and understand our value-add for assisting you, your clients and partners with creating, managing and supporting their e-business, e-commerce and e-solutions.

Nearly every site and every company we work with presents a unique set of requirements. Here we've tried to provide ballpark estimates, scenarios and definitions for basic understanding and, hopefully, the wisdom to help you choose the right firm to help you along the way. We don't do it all, but we ensure that it all gets done on your behalf. You won't have to spend weeks and months reviewing and researching when you can learn everything necessary in the initial customer contact meeting.

As we said, there is no easy recipe or "cookbook" approach to e-business. However, we think you'll find our list of basic steps an excellent starting point for understanding your e-needs, and appreciating the level of support CMCg's e-business, e-commerce, e-solutions and consulting services brings to your e-business/e-launch, commerce launch or expansion.

1. Carrier - Internet connection support.

2. Hosting Center - Increasingly, companies large and small are turning to so-called co-location services, which are specialized, cost-efficient facilities for hosting your equipment and connecting it to the Internet, 24 hours, 7 days per week, 365 days per year.

3. Router - These devices help receive and send the packets going to and from your Web site.

4. Web Server - Physical computers that run a Web site, and the software that runs on those boxes. The former can be as simple as a PC or as powerful as a $200,000 Sun Enterprise 4500 server. The latter delivers Web pages to browsers on computers out on the Internet.

5. Application Server - Next-generation servers that excel at running programming languages, such as C++, Java and Perl, which make it easier for commercial Web sites to deliver dynamic information such as stock quotes, personalized information and "shopping carts," to name a few.

6. Database Server - Vast databases underlie all commercial Web sites. Specialized database servers extract that data and serve it up fast where needed.

7. Storage System - These are similar to hard drives arrayed in giant ensembles, ranging from PC-size boxes to refrigerator-like containers, with capacities from 10 gigabytes to 2 terabytes. The systems connect to database servers via very high-speed storage-area-network switches.

8. Load Balancing - This is an important traffic-management process for balancing incoming requests to your servers-such as people clicking on a link that brings up a page from your site. These products and processes direct information loads from maxed-out servers to those with the most available capacity in order to limit embarrassing "server busy" messages.

9. Security - Possibly one of the most important areas of e-business models. At every level of the technology, an e-business has to protect itself against unauthorized intrusion and data theft. This is done through firewalls, or secure software barriers, to keep trespassers out, and by systems for intrusion detection.

10. Caching - Web servers bump up against performance limits, and so must store frequently requested information, such as volumes of images or sound files, either on special sites in the network or in memory on the site's servers (reverse caching).

11. Managed Service Providers - New industry providers that operate all or part of the infrastructure of a site and provide service-level agreements (SLAs) that guarantee a site's uptime at agreed-upon levels, such as the "three nines," referring to a site being up 99.9% of the time. For example, CMCg partners with the managed service provider Verio, Inc.

12. Content Management - For large Internet sites it pays to invest in a content management system that makes it easy to create and organize Web content as well as roll it onto the site. Many content management systems offer features like caching and analysis of site traffic.

13. Personalization - These systems build profiles of visitors based on voluntary supplied information, or by tracking behavior on the site or elsewhere on the Internet. These systems also work with "recommendation engines," which suggest related products and services already purchased by the customer.

14. Transaction Engines - Clients need "transaction engines," or applications that allow their customers to configure an order and pay by credit card or other electronic means online. The systems enable you to manage product and buyer information, and usually link to third-party processes that drive the credit-card transactions online.

15. Ad Serving - If you want your site to accept advertising, certain third-party products will keep inventory, track performance and deliver the ads to your pages over the Internet.

16. Site Analysis - Servers collect and store volumes of information about how pages view, site performance, number of visitors, length of stay and what was looked at by the visitor, but with the aid of special applications.

17. Campaign Management - Beyond site analysis are marketing applications that use data about users' behavior on the site to launch certain marketing efforts, such as automated e-mail that responds to a purchase by offering a related product on special.

18. Customer Support - A valuable e-business requirement. Customers can buy packages to deliver customer support in-house, or they can outsource it all.

19. Application Integration - Bolting together non-Internet systems and Web operations, which usually involve suites of specialized solutions for technologies such as Oracle and SAP. Building Web sites is only the beginning if you have off-line systems that do not work with your current site. Without this integration, a company Web site or e-commerce setup will not be able to talk to its "legacy" inventory, accounting, sales or supply systems. Modern e-business requires system integration and interaction.

20. Sales Integration - Once all of your firm's systems can speak to one another, pulling together all sales data in real time-regardless of who got the sales-presents remarkable opportunities to forecast demand and track customers.

21. Supply Chain Integration - Whether your suppliers are third parties or just your colleagues, our e-solutions and other I-procurement applications allow you to give them an up-to-the-minute picture of your sales and manufacturing efforts. This will allow them to gauge or measure their own inventory and production. Our e-solutions can also be used to help you automate transactions with suppliers, or set up auctions or trading exchanges to get the best prices from suppliers.

22. Financials - Once you have transactions taking place over the Web, automated or not, you'll want to plug that data into your accounting system. The latest e-applications enter the transaction as an account receivable or account payable in the general ledger.

23. Fulfillment - Or Delivery! These e-application processes support the final step for e-business. This step involves getting product out the door and to its destination. This may include receiving orders, figuring the best means of transport, arranging for pickup/delivery and even notifying your home office when the shipment has arrived.