The collapse of US business-to-business (B2B) software maker Commerce One will not leave the South African market stranded, says local rights owner Online Liquidity.
When Commerce One was founded nine years ago, it had ambitions to become the B2B equivalent of online auction site eBay. However, it never made a profit and steadily lost money since its 1999 Nasdaq listing, which was suspended on 12 September and is now annotated by the word "bankrupt".
The company has since formally filed for bankruptcy and received permission to auction its remaining assets. By the end of September, Commerce One had less than $300 000 (R1.8 million) in the bank.
German software group SAP, which owned 20% of Commerce One, has written off its investment.
Johannesburg firm Online Liquidity owns the South African rights for Commerce One`s systems and has licence agreements with several of the country`s largest B2B operations, including Naspers` Commerce Zone, Bidvest`s MyMarket, First National Bank, the South African Post Office and Sasol.
Online Liquidity CEO Michael Bosman says his company bought the rights to Commerce One`s source code in December 2003 using its own funds to complete the transaction. He would not comment on how much it was worth.
"We were the distributor and last year we saw the writing was on the wall for Commerce One and we decided to buy the source code," he says.
Japanese industrial conglomerate Mitsubishi also bought the rights to the Commerce One source code.
Bosman says Online Liquidity now has about 10 UK customers, including beer giant Coors Breweries, which originally bought the Commerce One software and now requires support and development.
No fallout
Commerce Zone CEO Andreij Horn says he does not expect any fallout from Commerce One`s collapse.
"Because Commerce One could not manage their business should not detract from the quality of the software they supplied," he says.
Commerce Zone uses the Commerce One software as the bed for the modules and functionality it has developed since installing it in 2001. These include the payment systems and the booking modules used by travel agents.
"The Commerce One brand does not even feature in our environment anymore. All our users interact with our platform and applications through a middleware layer. Should we ever see the need to replace the switching technology that underlies our applications, our customers would not even notice the difference," Horn says.
Bosman says Online Liquidity is still deciding what to do with the Commerce One brand and some of the negative connotations surrounding it.
"So far we have kept the name because it is well known in the market. However, all the enhancements and developments have been under the Online Liquidity brand."
Bosman says about 80 large South African companies use the software and Commerce Zone has used the engine to process R13 billion worth of transactions during the past four years.
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