Undertaking an in-depth evaluation of e-commerce servers

In the year 2000, hundreds of billions of dollars in sales are expected to be transacted electronically over the Internet. The success of the 1998 online holiday season has broadcast such opportunity to both vendors and users of e-commerce servers, the application packages for transacting business on the Internet, and heightened the demand for this core enabling technology.

A new in-depth report by the Patricia Seybold Group titled "Comparative Evaluation of Leading Electronic Commerce Servers, Second Edition", enables vendor and user organisations to assess the business and technical framework of six leading e-commerce servers before they make the most significant investment needed to successfully capture online business.

The 325-page report, written by Mitchell L Kramer, senior consultant/analyst, Information Assets Practice, the Patricia Seybold Group, was developed over two years building on the first edition released in 1998.

The report analysis is based on product installation and review, interviews with e-commerce server users and vendors, and the Patricia Seybold Group knowledgebase. The report findings are comprised of four sets of evaluation requirements for selecting e-commerce servers: functional requirements, administrative requirements, organisation and architecture requirements, and product/vendor requirements.

The six e-commerce servers evaluated in the report are:

.         Commerce Exchange 2.5 by InterWorld

.         IStore 3I Release 3.1.1 by Oracle

.         Net.Commerce 3.2 by IBM

.         One-to-One Commerce 4.1 by Broadvision

.         Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition by Microsoft

.         Transact 4.2.1 by Open Market

"E-commerce server packages, while far from shrink-wrapped, are nearly turnkey and require very little customisation to implement the simplest of online commerce sites," says Kramer.

"This in-depth report includes the analysis needed for business and technical professionals to quickly select an e-commerce application which will make it easy for their customers to do business with them online."

E-commerce servers are software products that implement online business processes including shopping, buying, customer service and sometimes marketing, sales and fulfilment. These application packages are the "buy" alternative to the "build" option of developing, integrating and implementing the e-commerce business process with development tools.

The latest generation of e-commerce servers explored in this report differ most in functionality (business to business and business to consumer) as well as architecture and implementation - areas which once outlined, allow organisations to simplify the selection process.

You can order a copy of the report online at www.psgroup.com.