AFTER studying information technology at the College of Computer and Information Science at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia, Muneerah Essa Al-Oud headed for the University of Essex and an MSc in e-commerce technology, starting last October, Steve Coomber writes.

Al-Oud says: “Increasingly, retailing and other commercial activities are moving online because firms are able to deal with more customers that way. As a result, every organisation is going to need people, whether in-house or via a consultancy, who know how to develop their web applications.”

Already Al-Oud's work on the MSc has involved a lot of hands-on application building. With projects on hotel reservation and shopping online applications already completed, she is now working on a recommender system for online shopping as part of her dissertation.

After the masters, Al-Oud hopes to take a PhD focusing on web agents which, she believes, will play an important part in the future of e-commerce. “If you are a consumer and want to book a holiday, you can go to the internet, enter your details and let an agent reserve everything for you. It is like going to a travel agent – the web agent knows about its environment, about other websites, for example, and will seek out the best deals.” When the PhD is competed, alOud hopes to combine academia with e-commerce consultancy, building applications for business; one of the reasons she took the multidisciplinary e-commerce MSc.

“I decided to study for the masters in e-commerce technology because the programme also includes elements of marketing, management and law, and for me, that was an essential part of the MSc experience.”

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