Jan 27th 2000: Commerce One and Microsoft confirmed the emergence of Internet-based market makers as a major category of ASP in separate announcements this week.

Commerce One on Monday (Jan 24th) launched a set of ecommerce portal platforms for market makers and ASPs, while Microsoft announced ClearLead, a Web-based lead management service that it has licensed to trading community hub VerticalNet, the recipient of a $100m investment last week from the vendor.

Commerce One launched a new hosted marketplace portal as well as an enhanced hosting version of its e-procurement application. The platforms will enable a range of operators, including manufacturers, telcos, banks, industry associations and dot-com startups to become application service providers in their own right, providing hosted ecommerce services to partners and customers.

"Manufacturers are beginning to realise they can take their value chain and turn them into a revenue opportunity," Chuck Donchess, VP of marketing and business development told media and analysts.

Alternatively, organisations can turn to pureplay ASPs such as Corio, which added the vendor's products to its lineup last November, to implement either or both solutions on their behalf, avoiding upfront licence costs ranging from $500,000 to $2.5m.

Microsoft's ClearLead is an Internet-based application that acts as a central 'clearing-house' for sales leads. It is designed to be implemented by providers serving vertical markets, who can integrate it into their own e-business solutions. Microsoft will itself be first to take advantage of the technology on its own Carpoint car-buying Web site, which will start using ClearLead to provide leads to car dealers in the spring. Its bCentral portal will also offer the service.

VerticalNet became the first third party to announce it will use ClearLead to provide lead management services to small and medium-size businesses in its vertical market communities. Last Thursday (Jan 20th), VerticalNet and Microsoft announced a marketing and technology alliance to promote and deliver e-commerce services and content to small and medium-size businesses, accompanied by a $100m equity investment in the provider by Microsoft. "VerticalNet will be a great showcase for Microsoft's Next Generation Windows Services," Laura Jennings,VP of worldwide strategic planning for Microsoft said in a statement.

VerticalNet operates over fifty industry-specific Web sites which aim to act as a comprehensive source of information, interaction and e-commerce for users in each vertical community.

Commerce One's new MarketSite Portal Solution 3.0 is a hosted marketplace platform that includes an application services framework for hosting ecommerce trading applications. Already built-in are the BuySite eprocurement portal, auction services, order management, content management and advertising services. Embedded within the platform is an object-oriented, schema-based XML transaction engine which Commerce One says provides an open framework for XML-based transactions. E-commerce vendors including Intershop, Microsoft, PeopleSoft, RightWorks and SAP support linking to the product.

Both of the portal offerings integrate into the Commerce One Global Trading Web, a network of hosted MarketSite trading portals operated by leading telecoms providers and other major organisations. As of Monday's announcement, the full list of providers is Banacci in Latin America, British Telecommunications in the United Kingdom, Cable and Wireless Optus in Australia, Commerce One in the United States, Deutsche Telekom in Germany, NTT Communications in Japan, SESAMi.com in Singapore, Swisscom in Switzerland and TD Bank in Canada, together with General Motors and the Royal Dutch/Shell group, which operate global portals for their respective industries.

Commerce One's own implementation demonstrates the platform's ability to host third-party applications, including a range of transaction and payment services, tax by Taxware, logistics by UPS and Tandata, and business intelligence through Cognos and Sagent. It also integrates Trade Zones that allow Internet market makers and vertical e-marketplaces to create a branded presence within the portal.