PcOrder.com Launches eStation
Sep. 24, 1999 (Computer Reseller News - CMP via COMTEX) -- Austin, Texas - The opening of E-business
standards enabled pcOrder.com Inc. to launch eStation, its third-generation E-business platform.
The new software is an enterprisewide solution that lets customers centrally manage their E-business
initiatives for all customer segments, said Rod Favaron, senior vice president of business strategy for
pcOrder.com, based here.
"About a year ago, we decided it was time to re-engineer our platform to take advantage of a lot of the
emerging standards in the industry and to accelerate the performance of our technology," Favaron said.
The new product is the result of the shift from proprietary E-commerce scripting languages to today's more
universally accepted architectures, such as Java, ASP, Servlets and C++, Favaron said.
The software also supports data exchange protocols set by industry organization RosettaNet, including XML
and electronic data interchange (EDI).
PcOrder.com wants to help clients attack the relatively untapped Web-based sales market. Ninety percent
of computer-based business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales still are not conducted online,
according to Forrester Research Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based research firm.
Compaq Computer Corp., Houston, already is using eStation to deliver an integrated, personalized extranet
solution to its customers, said Flint Brenton, vice president of E-commerce for Compaq.
"The time-to-market speed benefits our customers directly [and] worldwide by allowing them to immediately
streamline and simplify their IT purchasing process," Brenton said.
Compaq formed an alliance with pcOrder.com in June to allow its Customer Choice model to provide both
direct and indirect online sales and fulfillment capabilities.
"The key advantage is to be able to service multiple segments all on the same platform," said Samy Aboel
Nil, vice president of development at pcOrder.com. "We've seen everyone, from the large enterprise
customers to resellers, [has] a tendency to put up a kind of patch quilt with many different sites that are not
integrated. It's not a consistent look or usage. One of the key points is that all those different applications
can all be integrated onto the same E-commerce platform."
The launch of eStation coincides with pcOrder.com's desire to unbundle its software from its content. This
follows a similar strategy pcOrder.com took earlier this year, when it separated its PC inventory content
from its outsourcing business to sell its ContentSource service, which provides online resellers with its
internally developed database of PC products and peripherals.
In time, pcOrder.com hopes to expand into new verticals, including Web-based sellers of office products,
games and consumer electronics, Favaron said.
"Prior to the new Internet standards, sites were working on older, more monolithic technology," he said.
"[EStation] has reached new levels of reliability and performance in terms of its ability to use third-party
scripting languages. Quite frankly, it's matured."
Next-Generation Business
- New software is an enterprisewide solution for centrally managing E-business initiatives.
- Supports data-exchange protocols set by RosettaNet.
- Compaq is using eStation for a personalized extranet for customers.
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