John S. McCright

Microsoft Corp.s Exchange 2000 platform is pulling even with Lotus Development Corp.s Notes and Domino platforms in the battle for groupware and collaboration software supremacy—at least among some of the companies development partners. The latest indication came last week when IT Factory Inc., a prominent developer of applications for Notes and Domino, purchased Enterprise Communications […]

New centralized administration capabilities in Groove Networks Inc.s peer-to-peer computing platform likely will make it more palatable to large enterprises. Groove 1.0, which began shipping last week, included Enterprise Network Services, a series of new features that enables IT managers to centrally control deployment of the software and enforce network security policies. The platform is […]

B2B software providers are the latest to take their turn at the Wall Street whipping post. And like the many other victims of the slowing economy, the problems of business-to-business software developers are mostly of their own making. Ariba Inc. and i2 Technologies Inc. each announced job cuts and earnings warnings last week, and Commerce […]

New online marketplaces built on peer-to-peer networking technology may face an uphill climb because of established veterans, but a handful of companies—including FirstPeer.com, Thinkstream and Netrana.com—believe they can pull it off. In a P2P marketplace, buyers and sellers connect their systems directly by trading database inserts rather than linking through a central server. As a […]

Oracle Corp. will face some opposition from its customers in its latest effort to get them off the integration track and onto online hosted applications. This effort by Oracle to sell its software as a hosted service is being built around a newly branded Oracle.com portal that will offer a packaged, all-or-nothing approach to buying […]

Host integration software developer WRQ Inc. takes a step forward this week in its effort to become an enterprise application integration company with updates of its VeraStream integration engine and Host Integration adapter. With the enhancements, IT departments will have another avenue for rapidly making basic company data, such as inventory information, available to Web-based […]

New software from blue Martini Software Inc. and Impresse Inc. looks to bring better workflow processes to marketing programs. Blue Martini last week said it is expanding its e-commerce suite with a campaign management application, Blue Martini Marketing. Separately, Impresse last month released an update of its MRM (Marketing Resource Management) Solution with a new […]

Net marketplace providers Ariba Inc. and Commerce One Inc. are preparing for what most observers agree will be a year in which the luster of the large public exchanges will be tarnished as large companies look, instead, to implement private exchanges. These private exchanges are essentially automated supply chains that use the marketplace platform to […]

As if the travel industrys margins werent thin enough, new technology from SideStep Inc. allows consumers to more precisely pinpoint the lowest airline fares, rental car rates and hotel bookings. Many of the travel companies themselves, however, are not upset by this potential assault on revenues and, in fact, are embracing it. Late last month, […]

Investors gasped last week when Joe Galli left his post as CEO of business-to-business e-commerce enabler VerticalNet Inc. to take the top spot at consumer products maker Newell Rubbermaid Inc. To many, it was the latest repudiation of the e-marketplace business model and led some to say the shakeout in B2B businesses is in full […]

Ariba Inc. is going to great lengths to get more mileage out of its e-commerce platform. At its Sell Side of B2B Conference in San Antonio next week, the company will announce its Supplier Hub Alliance. This will enable Ariba, of Mountain View, Calif., to refer suppliers that want to tap into their buyers Ariba-powered […]

As business-to-business marketplaces struggle to devise a profitable and sustainable business model, some B2B companies are opting to become more than transaction hosters. A small but influential group of companies, such as Ventro Corp. and e-Steel Corp., have decided to begin developing their own technology. The belief is that the winning solution for B2B involves […]