Networks

it's a combination of both.
1) does the business stand to show a significant benefit of going with ecommerce application?
( pure business decision )

2) what hardware is required?
( it technical )

3) site design
technical concept, business approval
the it department designs the site / app, but before going live the board has to approve look / feel.

what the it department comes u[p with in design may not fit the business properly, so the board has to have final say on how the site will look.

the functionality is pure technical ( other than aspects controlled by look, such as that theft tech called clientside scripting [ flash, javascript, activex, dhtml, vbscript ] )

remember, it isn't well broadcast, but clientside scripting means the site owner is legally required to pay for cpu time for every site visitor. if they don't they have commited theft.

My opinion is that the decision to use ecommerce or ebusiness to general additional revenue is a business decision. In making such a decision, the suits need to know how much developing, implementing, administering and maintaining such a venue will cost vs realized revenue.

The actual implementation of the ecommerce/ebusiness is a technical one. The suits aren't the ones installing, setting up, administrating or maintaining it, the IT people are as well as the administrative people.

Developing the IT infrastructure, and only the IT infrastructure, for ebusiness is a technical decision. However, the global view of using ebusiness is a managerial decision.