InformationWeek

Some commerce applications are bundling application servers and other types of middleware to ease enterprise integration. Among the connectivity leaders are Allaire Corp.'s Spectra and IBM's WebSphere Commerce Server, which support back-end integration through their respective application servers. IBM is well-positioned to extend its platform capabilities in this area, given its legacy history and the continued adoption of its MQSeries middleware offering within the enterprise.

The billing and payment resolution process is a critical part of any trading relationship. Most business-to-business relationships don't operate on credit-card payments or instant debits, but use the traditional process of issuing purchase orders, receiving invoices and bills, and issuing checks to settle the bills.

Though E-commerce has taken off and businesses are buying more goods electronically, they're still using traditional paper processes to pay. Thus, it makes sense for E-commerce platform vendors to integrate offerings from electronic bill presentment and payment providers into their platforms.

Integrated electronic bill payment and presentment would let sellers present invoices to the buyer through the same system used to start the transaction. In addition, most of these offerings support other payment mechanisms besides credit cards, which is a must for business-to-business commerce relationships in which trading partners want to settle via other electronic transfer methods.

Of the products we evaluated, none provide out-of-the-box E-billing capabilities, although Netscape includes an E-billing module, Biller Xpert, as part of its line of E-commerce products. Other vendors are making strides through partnerships, such as IBM, which recently announced a partnership with CheckFree Corp.

The fact is, the major E-commerce platform vendors today are those that originally developed their systems for business-to-consumer applications. Trying to use these same platforms for business-to-business applications will remain a forced fit until the vendors can concentrate on enhancing the products with a true B-to-B focus. Many vendors are still concentrating on enhancing their products for the business-to-business market; B-to-B capabilities are just as complex, but don't necessarily overlap with business-to-consumer capabilities.

The biggest factor that will accelerate the vendors' development of business-to-business capabilities is not demand from large companies, but from B-to-B marketplaces. Forrester Research predicts that $1.4 billion in sales will flow through online markets in 2004. With this kind of demand, the business-to-business marketplace makers are looking for more sophisticated capabilities and faster time to market, and the vendors are already starting to respond.

For example, IBM recently unveiled a new edition of its WebSphere Commerce Suite that's tailored for business-to-business marketplaces. This edition will reportedly include support for contracts, spot contracts, requests for proposals, and requests for quotes. Likewise, Intershop recently unveiled Marketplace Toolkit, which will provide easier connectivity among the back-end systems of business-to-business trading partners, and will support advanced catalog and transaction syndication via ArcadiaOne as well as marketplaces running on Commerce One.

But if you're looking for a robust business-to-business solution today, realize that buying an E-commerce platform may be like buying a house that's a fixer-upper: Expect to put in a lot of effort (and maybe hire some contractors) to get it up to your specifications.

Rich Huff, Frank Meister, and Joe Fenner are senior analysts at Doculabs, an independent research and advisory firm. They can be reached at info@doculabs.com

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