title: Mobile commerce: transforming the vision into reality
abstract: This editorial preface investigates current developments in mobile commerce (M-commerce) and proposes an integrated architecture that supports business and consumer needs in an optimal way to successfully implement M-commerce business processes. The key line of thought is based on the heuristic observation that customers will not want to receive M-commerce offerings to their mobile telephones. As a result, a pull as opposed to a push approach becomes a necessary requirement to conduct M-commerce. In addition, M-commerce has to rely on local, regional, demographic and many other variables to be truly effective. Both observations necessitate an M-commerce architecture that allows the coherent integration of enterprise-level systems as well as the aggregation of product and service offerings from many different and partially competing parties into a collaborative M-commerce platform. The key software component within this integrated architecture is an event management engine to monitor, detect, store, process and measure information about outside events that are relevant to all participants in M-commerce
keyphrases: mobile commerce M-commerce integrated architecture consumer needs mobile telephones event management engine business needs pull approach collaborative platform