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Responding to the tough economic climate and slower growth in IT spending, Viacore Inc. this week said it was rolling out pay-as-you go hosted supply chain management service.
The Irvine, Calif., company announced that it had made its Partner Integration Networks services available for a monthly fee, nixing its up-front software licensing and implementation fees.
Viacores software connects buyers and suppliers – primarily manufacturers – in private marketplace settings. Under the new pricing model, fees will be assessed monthly. With its new model Viacore will take on the responsibility of integrating partners into the Partner Integration Network.
Each privately-branded marketplace will include three components. An Infrastructure Management component provides disaster recovery, data storage, data archiving and infrastructure monitoring. A Data/Process Management component handles routing of documents and processes between trading partners. A Community Enablement module includes business-to-business software provisioning, data validation, testing, training and project coordination for partner integration and activation.
According to Fadi Chehade, chairman and CEO of Viacore, the market is moving away from a model in which industry leaders are expected to make substantial, up-front investments in new partner integration technology. Rather, companies are moving towards an environment where they outsource partner integration.
By outsourcing partner integration functions, customers still have to concentrate on defining and maintaining their information model as well as implementing and managing the appropriate business application for the model, according to officials.
Pricing for Viacores Partner Integration Network is determined by the capacity requirements of each client.
Viacore is not the first company to provide hosted private trading exchange services.
eScout Inc., for example, has close to 20,000 member companies and hosts private business-to-business exchanges through its Hosted Private Exchange Solution. eScout, of Pleasanton, Calif., works primarily with small and regional financial institutions.
Likewise, Need2Buy – which announced earlier this week a merger with Efinity Inc. and a name change to RiverOne Inc. – also provides hosted private exchanges.