There are several examples in the supply chain space where companies such as i2 and Manugistics are leaders. However, there are companies that are not as well known that are using OR in e-business. Its software takes into account the ad-promotion pool, associated advertising and partner contracts, and other constraints, working in real time as customers interact with a web site. Achieving real-time capability requires models and solvers that reliably return good solutions in compute windows that may be very much shorter than desired. Heuristics or approximation algorithms are often necessary.
Some applications pose challenges beyond short compute windows.
There are several known approaches to promote solution-space stability. Another challenge concerns how to think about repetitive decision making with incomplete information.