Industrial-strength catalogs

Posted by Webhost - 02/09/97 at 02:09 am

Rounding out its Internet commerce software offerings, Open Market (OMKT) next
week will release new software for building “industrial-strength” online
catalogs.

LiveCommerce, targeted at the business-to-business space, is built on
technology from Waypoint Software, which Open Market acquired in February for
$12 million. The product will be introduced at next week’s Internet Commerce
Expo trade show in Los Angeles.

Open Market also will announce a 50 percent price cut to $125,000 for companies
that want to build and host their own complex Internet stores using the
company’s flagship Transact e-commerce software. Transact’s standard $250,000
price tag remains unchanged for Web hosting services, ISPs, Web malls, and
other companies that host multiple storefronts.

“LiveCommerce is the next generation of applications for building industrial
catalogs on the Internet,” said Ellen Brezniak, vice president of Open Market’s
business-to-business unit. “We now offer a complete end-to-end Internet commerce
solution.” Other software offerings include consumer interface software, order
processing, and online customer service.

Open Market will target the new offering to manufacturers, distributors, or
selling organizations, companies that may have catalogs with tens of thousands
of parts, hundreds of thousands of product numbers, complex technical
specifications, and many users.

LiveCommerce is Open Market’s first product to run on Windows NT. Features
include multiple options for personalizing catalogs by user, job type,
department, or company, as well as several searching methods and a flexible
authoring environment. Catalogs can be customized for content, product lines,
pricing, and branding specific to each customer.

Open Market’s announcement will mark a significant thrust into the
business-to-business space, which Forrester Research predicts will grow from
$600 million in 1996 to $105 billion by the year 2000.

But LiveCommerce also will put Open Market in the position of competing with
some of its current partners, including Cadis, Saqqara, and iCat, which offer
search tools or cataloging software. Cadis and Saqqara are primarily for
business-to-business marketers.

LiveCommerce’s $45,000 price, however, may deter customers who find offerings
from iCat more in their price range.

Beta users of the new catalog tools include C & K Components, an
electromechanical switch manufacturer that will allow users to configure more
than 500 million permutations of its switches in minutes. Australia’s Computer
Integration Centre, a network integration and outsourcing vendor, also is using
LiveCommerce.

Open Market will partner with Web developers and systems integrators such as
CSC, Cambridge Technology Partners, and Onward Technologies to help customers
deploy LiveCommerce catalogs.

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