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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
STOP AND SHOP: WIDE RANGING E-COMMERCE SOLUTIONS CAN
BE CONFUSING
- May 27, 1997 - By Jim Kerstetter
- Laura Longcore sounds like Goldilocks rummaging
through the home of the Three Bears as she describes
buying software to run a commerce-enabled Web site.
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- Longcore, electronic commerce manager at Boise
Cascade Office Products Corp., in Itasca, Ill., faced the
same problem of many IT managers trying to establish an
E-commerce presence on the Web: to find the software that
was just right for her company.
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- "When we started looking for a product in January
1996, there were hardly any out there," said Longcore.
-
- "The ones that were there were so expensive we
thought we could do it ourselves for a lot less," she
added. "And the less-expensive products didn't have what
we needed."
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- Decisions, decisions
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- Today, a proliferation of new products--with prices
ranging from a few thousand dollars to $250,000 but
offering what sound like the same capabilities--hasn't
made that buying decision any easier.
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- When making their buying decisions for Web commerce
servers, analysts and users said, companies must keep
three questions in mind as they
- try to make sense of this murky, young market: What
do they want to do with the Web site? How much do they
want to spend? And how large do they want to grow the
site?
-
- After looking at Open Market Inc., which was too
expensive, and several catalog servers, which were
lacking, Longcore settled on a pilot project with
Actra Business Systems--the Netscape Communications
Corp. and General Electric Information Services
spin-off.
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- Now Longcore is using Actra's $25,000 ECXpert EDI
(electronic data interchange) on the Internet server
and OrderExpert Seller cataloging software. In
addition to considering the scope of the Web site, IT
managers
- should take their time establishing a Web
presence, users said.
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- "It's probably better for us to spend more up
front, quite frankly," said Rich Belanger, vice
president of technology at Mainspring Communications
Inc., in
- Cambridge, Mass.
-
- "We need our system to be very reliable, robust
and secure," Belanger said. "We wanted to make it as
easy as possible and as comfortable as possible to
interact with us electronically."
-
- Belanger opted for the $250,000 OM-Transact
platform from Open Market, of Cambridge, Mass. Though
pricey, the piece of mind that its scalability and its
heavy-duty capabilities offered was worth it, he said.
-
- OM-Transact is a transaction platform that can
accept multiple payment types, including EDI, credit
cards, micropayments and even procurement information.
-
- Next month, Mainspring will launch a
subscription-based IT news service with yearly rates
expected to run up to $500. Belanger wanted an
- application that could provide fast transaction
processing, tight controls over delivery and access,
and reliability without a lot of customization or
- development time.
-
- Fans of less expensive software, such as IBM's
Net.Commerce, say they don't see a major drop-off in
functionality. Nevertheless, add-on components such as
product configuration engines will drive up the price
- considerably, said Douglas Pelletier, president of
Trifecta Technologies Inc., a Web site hosting company
in Allentown, Pa.
-
- Different applications are trying to answer very
different needs, he said. Some, such as iCat Corp.'s
Electronic Commerce Suite 3.0, are designed strictly
to be configurable electronic catalogs.
-
- That's not to be confused with OM-Transact. In
fact, iCat's software can often be used as a front end
to OM-Transact.
-
- Even commerce applications from within the same
company can service very different needs.
-
- IBM's Net.Commerce server, for example, is ideal
for a constantly changing catalog Web site because it
provides a GUI that enables an administrator to
- temporarily stage new items and set rules to
define when those products can be put on the shelf.
-
- Buying the basics
-
- You get what you pay for, said David Alschuler, an
analyst at Aberdeen Group, in Boston.
-
- The less expensive software might be more than
adequate for a basic Web storefront. "[But] if you are
talking about doing business-to-business transactions,
you need to handle complex product configurations,"
- Alschuler said.
-
- "You need to be able to query inventory and
production schedules through integration with
back-end applications. Those kind of merchant servers
[such as IBM's and Microsoft Corp.'s new Site Server
Enterprise] just can't do it," he said.
-
- Most users believe, however, that less expensive
applications are catching up fast with the boutique
solutions. The most recent releases from Microsoft,
- IBM and iCat were significant upgrades, adding
Open Database Connectivity compliance and better
personalization features.
-
- Even Belanger, who is a big fan of Open Market's
software, sees change coming. "If we were making this
[buying] decision a year from now," he said, "I think
it would be very different."
-
- Copyright(c) 1997 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part
in any form or medium without express written
permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is
prohibited. PC Week and the PC Week logo are
trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. PC Week
Online and the PC Week Online logo are trademarks of
Ziff Davis Publishing Company.
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