InformationWeek

For instance, Ventro Corp.'s Chemdex E-marketplace, an exchange for biological and chemical products for research scientists, deploys Ariba's Buyer software on the front end, integrating it with a central catalog-management system that resides in an Oracle8i database. It uses webMethods' business-to-business XML-based software to link to suppliers' and customers' back-end systems. Messaging software is from Tibco Software Inc. All this at a cost of nearly $40 million over a two-year period.

To amortize that cost, Chemdex and parent company Ventro are leveraging their architecture to create several vertical exchanges, in partnership with third parties, within two or three months.

"No single vendor's software can cover the waterfront of the whole E-marketplace infrastructure," says Pierre Samec, Ventro's CIO. "That's why we had to create an architecture that can handle end-to-end commerce and a catalog of more than two million items."

Indeed, trailblazers such as INC2inc, Ventro, and VerticalNet may very well become licensors of integrated

E-commerce infrastructure platforms, because they built their own end-to-end suites and now can sell them to others. VerticalNet, which began as an informational portal for more than 40 sectors, has acquired exchange software maker Tradeum and catalog aggregation maker Isadra to create an E-marketplace architecture for nearly 60 portals. The company is also likely to license the package to other customers, says Tradeum CEO Zev Laderman.

AMR Research says the proliferation of E-marketplaces and private trading hubs is putting pressure on leading software vendors to deliver comprehensive one-stop software that also links marketplaces together.

For example, procurement vendor Ariba, supply-chain management software vendor i2 Technologies, and IBM-which has commerce engines, databases, and server products plus a global service organization-formed an alliance in March to integrate their respective offerings and create a full, integrated package that ranges from transactions to logistics and payment handling. Extricity is developing software connectors that will link RightFreight.com suppliers and buyers plus connectors that tie it to the National Transportation Exchange.

But one-stop-shopping is not for everyone. SciQuest.com, a leading E-marketplace for laboratory supplies and scientific equipment that brings together more than 1,000 suppliers and 78 business customers, prefers to choose the pieces of its architecture. "Some vendors are trying to be all things for everyone, but different software components may not be the best-of-breed products in their categories," says Antony Francis, SciQuest.com's VP of operations.