CommerceQuest and IBM to deliver five B2B e-marketplaces

CommerceQuest Inc, a leading provider of business-to-business (B2B) integration solutions for Net Market Makers, has teamed with IBM to deliver five e-marketplaces to customers in a broad range of industries. CommerceQuest and IBM plan to deliver 60 more such e-marketplaces in the US by the end of 2000, and will offer the service to Net Market Makers in South Africa later this year.

The customers -- ICG Commerce, AviEx, e-Chemicals, PlasticsNet and UIP -- are using enableNet (CommerceQuest`s on-line managed trading service) to integrate their trading communities over the Internet.

In a recent US poll, Forrester Research found that 71% of companies plan to extend their business processes to e-marketplaces -- online venues that enable multiple buyers and sellers to conduct commerce -- by 2001. Estimates vary, but analysts also project that the market for business-to-business e-commerce will be worth anywhere between $2.7 trillion and $7.3 trillion by 2004. John McCarthy, group director of research at Forrester said, "The integration of business processes through e-marketplaces will position them at the centre of business-to-business trade via the Internet."

"E-marketplaces play an increasingly important role in the next generation of e-business," said John Patrick, vice president of Internet technology, IBM. "Technology creates a much tighter link between buyers, sellers and everyone else who does business in a given industry. More than ever, industries are looking to IBM and integrators, such as CommerceQuest, to provide the hardware, software and services to build their online trading communities."

By using the enableNet service, CommerceQuest`s customers benefit from reduced supply-chain costs and increased speed to market. In addition, they get a technology platform -- without having to incur the cost of building it or managing it themselves -- that connects them to critical business services, and is flexible enough to grow with them as their business grows. To ensure that their service is highly scalable and available while integrating seamlessly with any network, CommerceQuest has built enableNet using IBM S/390 servers, DB2 Universal Database, MQSeries middleware and Domino software.

"Our requirement to develop and deploy enableNet as a mission-critical solution meant we had to select a highly scalable, highly available and highly secure hardware and software platform," said Colin Osborne, Chairman of CommerceQuest. "This means we needed the ultimate e-business server and we found that in IBM`s S/390. Our complete outsourced e-commerce solution, from top to bottom, is oriented toward exploiting the S/390, MQSeries, and other IBM strategic software assets."

"CommerceQuest has taken a leadership position in building e-marketplaces for Net Market Makers by providing them with the tools necessary to quickly integrate trading communities over the Internet," said Rick Puckette, Senior Vice President and CTO of ICG Commerce. "By using enableNet as a foundation component of our total B2B Marketplace offering, we expect to accelerate our time to market with a scalable solution that can grow and adapt with our and our customers` businesses."

enableNet will be available in South Africa later this year.

For more information, please contact CommerceQuest SA on (011) 447 4701 or visit www.CommerceQuest.com