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IBM Turns Up Internet Heat
(03/09/98; 8:56 p.m. EST)
By John Evan Frook, InternetWeek
IBM, which is repositioning all of its products and
services around network-centric businesses, Monday
unleashed an array of commerce server products
designed to enable companies to quickly integrate their
businesses on the Web.
The company, which in recent weeks unveiled
commerce-hosting services and network management
solutions for business-to-business data exchange over
intranets, made a series of announcements aimed at
positioning Big Blue as a vendor capable of addressing
the needs of both the smallest and largest vendors.
IBM said catalog/store retailer Brookstone, outdoor
equipment vendor REI, and battery retailer
1-800-Batteries are working with IBM software and
services. REI was previously a customer of competitor
Netscape Communications.
IBM's announcements were expected, but should not
be discounted. It has long planned to assemble its
low-end Domino.Merchant, mid-tier Net.Commerce
Start, and high-end Net.Commerce Pro products into
a full array of products. It now appears to be bringing
together key elements needed for every type of
customer.
On the low-end of its offering, IBM said it would
release Domino Merchant 2.0 server pack this month
at $3,495. The product includes applications for
implementing third-party payment, UPS shipping, and
BackWeb push programming.
In the mid-range, Net.Commerce has some of the
most significant advancements. IBM has added a
series of business-process builders and design
templates called Net.Commerce Start, which moves
the commerce software closer to the arena of a
packaged application. In earlier versions, competitors
exploited the general perception that Net.Commerce
required extensive custom development and services
to keep many potential customers with
electronic-commerce budgets less than $250,000
from going the IBM route. With the new offering, IBM
said even the smallest customers can get up and
running.
On the high-end of the equation, Net.Commerce Pro
adds integration with existing payment technologies,
like electronic data interchange, and the ability to
expose and transmit data from existing business
systems to the mix. It announced a series of Java
objects and APIs under the heading of Commerce
Extensibility Framework.
The IBM move toward integration tools follows
Microsoft's release last month of Commerce
Interchange Pipeline in Site Server 3.0, which also
allows existing business applications to be linked to
commerce websites. Other commerce vendors are
also providing similar links. IBM said its Commerce
Extensibility Framework goes beyond Commerce
Interchange Pipeline because it supports
interoperability via Java.
IBM is also pushing toward enhanced payment
through its CommercePoint payment systems. Built on
Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) protocol,
CommercePoint includes consumer wallets, payment
gateways to banks, and registry for merchants. IBM
announced its Merchant electronic component will
extend from AIX and NT to Sun Solaris and
mainframe implementations. Nevertheless, SET will
need mainstream acceptance by consumers in order to
take hold.
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