Time to revive this thread
I recommend you to take a look at Business 2.0 magazine, Feb. issue. It includes an article called How it works which deals with the cycle of B2B E-commerce transactions.
The field is divided into several segments:
1. Informant (VIGN, IWOV, etc.)
2. Configurator (CLIC)
3. Market maker (CMRC, ARBA)
4. Production mgr - supply chain mgr (ITWO, MANU)
5. Profiler CRM (EPNY)
The most undervalued (in terms of company market Caps) of these segments is that of the sales side Software (the Configurator). There are four main companies in this field: Trilogy, Firepond, Selectica and CLIC. CLIC is the only public company of the four (Selectica and Firepond are expected to go public soon). The main competition for these four is in-house development of comparable products. Companies with complex products and services choose not to develop in-house because of the long development process and the heavy maintenance afterwards. The conservative estimate for the market of sell-side software is $2B in a couple of years.
CLIC has also moved into the Market maker category by the CNKT acquisition (by enabling trading in vertical communities such as CMDX). I expect much cross-segmentation by consolidation during Y2K, of all the companies with large market caps in this space (CMRC, BVSN, SEBL, ITWO, ARBA, EPNY, VIGN, etc.)
I expect the market to recognize the value of CLIC once people become more familiar with the inner workings of B2B commerce. The Selectica and Firepond IPOs should help. So can more aggressive PR and IR by Calico. Naumann, are you listening? |
