Prototyping the GUISET Architecture using the NoNgoma online stores

Abstract

Small, Micro and Medium Enterprises (SMMEs) play a huge role in improving the economic growth of a community. In the area of Nongoma, where this study is concentrated, most SMMEs still use traditional methods, such as street vending, in order to penetrate the market. However, these fall short in exposing the business, compared to those using electronic business (e-business) technologies. E-business can provide significant benefits such as cost savings, quick execution of business transactions, market for SMMEs collaboration and promoting globalisation of business activities. This work introduces an e-business technology in the rural areas of Nongoma with the hope that it can provide many opportunities for the resource-constrained SMMEs of that region. One such resource is exposure to affordable and reliable Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructures. By introducing an ICT infrastructure to these SMMEs, the aim is to expose SMMEs‟ business activities to a much broader market of consumers. This research was aimed at introducing a Grid-based Utility Infrastructure for SMMEs Enabling Technologies, (GUISET), prototype for enabling SMMEs business activities without them actually owning the infrastructure. This is in the hope of giving them an opportunity to explore the global market. In this research, software development paradigms were compared based on the GUISET requirements. The requirements, formulated from the GUISET characteristics, are tailored towards an infrastructure for addressing service composition and dynamic service selection. These requirements were used to select a development paradigm deemed to be the most suitable development strategy for the GUISET infrastructure. The emergence of open-source solutions have become a „hot‟ topic in software development and tool support in the last decade. v Its application in different fields, including Service Oriented Computing (SOC), led to open source software being the natural choice for prototyping GUISET infrastructure and the Nongoma Online Stores, (NOS). The GUISET infrastructure supports the NOS application through the enablement of, (1): the assembly of components and (2): dynamic binding to services used by the defined assembly in (1), to achieve its business goal. The completion of a business process by the NOS automatically validates the GUISET infrastructure as service composition and dynamicity have been achieved.