Cape Town-based IT start-up Southeaster plans to release the first version of its e-commerce software suite, Silverfish, at First Tuesday in Cape Town tonight.
Designed for rapid development of e-commerce sites, the product is targeted at Web developers lacking the technical skills to build e-commerce functionality. Wizards guide the developer through the creation of catalogues, tendering systems, reverse tendering, and other typical online transactional necessities.
"As long as the designer has some technical knowledge, he can build an e-commerce Web site," says Mick Gibson, head of marketing, Southeaster. Complex technical tasks, such as integrating the site with a payment gateway, are automated. Silverfish users will be able to select from a variety of payment gateways, including ECnet, US gateway Cybercash and UK-based Worldpay.
Although the channel to market has not been clearly defined yet, Southeaster envisages its reseller base as the existing Web development community, which will use the product to create sites for clients, and resell the server component to clients to run the site.
Licensing is based on the features that a client needs, starting at an existing catalogue and expanding to selling online, allowing partners to post product in a commission- or flat-fee revenue model, tendering and reverse-tendering.
"We want to level the e-commerce playing fields, and give the user something he can take ownership of. There is an initial learning curve, but once you've got it, it's really simple to use," says Gibson.
The application currently runs on Windows platforms, although the company is looking at the feasibility of porting it over to Linux and Apple Mac.
The early market release of Silverfish is expected at First Tuesday, the monthly venture capital/entrepreneur event, in Cape Town tonight. Southeaster is currently running on British venture capital, having secured lb400 000 in its seed financing round. It is in the market for its second round of funding, and hopes to find another half-a-million pounds to continue its development work.
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