Now layer on e-commerce, with mobile technology enabling real-time price comparisons, and the exercise of pricing becomes even more complicated.

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Rakuten offers an additional layer of support by providing e-commerce consultants and experts to advise merchants on their online business strategy, implementation, sales and marketing as well as lead and revenue generation.

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Software-defined networks will provide some of this flexibility by separating the control function from data forwarding, but there are additional capabilities emerging, he says, such as intelligent switching of wavelengths, the ability to mix dedicated bandwidth with best-efforts networks, and application layer network traffic optimization, e.g.

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Some Web-based e-mail services like Google's Gmail offer tools to add an extra layer of protection.

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At the same time, all markets can't be different, there is a need to have a common layer so that you can use the same services such as stock tickers and e-mail notification in every device.

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