[ ASP news ] [ publications ] [ forum ] [ about us ] [ directory ]
[ ASP news ] [ publications ] [ forum ] [ about us ] [ directory ]
|
NEWS
Mar 31st 2000: European ASPs were boosted by investments, launches, awards and the announcement of a date for the continent's first IPO by a pureplay ASP this week. Dutch ASP EC-Gate on Tuesday (Mar 28th) announced closing a $10.5m funding round led by London-based international venture capital group 3i. Amsterdam-based EC-Gate, founded in 1997, builds and operates business-to-business collaborative ecommerce portals for startups and established brands. The announcement signals a new phase in its expansion in both Europe and north America, where it already has customer projects either under way or nearing completion in a variety of industry sectors. 3i is also an investor in systems management and groupware ASP Netstore, which on Tuesday (Mar 28th) published details of its imminent listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). It is aiming to raise some £40m ($63m) of new money in an institutional placement that will also include some existing shareholdings. Just under a third of the business will be sold in the placement. Final pricing is due to be decided Apr 12th and dealings in the shares are set to begin Apr 19th. Canadian document management and groupware vendor OpenText announced its entry into the ASP market in a deal with KPNQwest, the pan-European telecoms joint venture between Qwest Communications and leading Dutch telco KPN. KPNQwest will host the vendor's Livelink application in the first such deal sealed by the vendor (see internetnews.com story, Open Text moves into European ASP market - Mar 31st 2000). Leading ASP Interliant sealed its alliance with European investment venture @viso with the formation of Interliant Europe. @viso is investing up to $40m in Interliant's European operations and acquisitions and will also provide a new French data centre facility. Interliant Europe is based in Paris, France, with other offices in Munich and in south-east England. Boca Raton-based ASP Hostlogic announced a new hosting agreement with IBM to offer an SAP package called "Young Enterprise" to emerging European businesses. Based on the mySAP.com platform, the package is "a full-blown ERP and ecommerce application delivered within a couple of months or even days," Hostlogic Europe MD Daniel Haas told a press briefing on Wednesday (Mar 29th). Other announcements included the production launch of Teeside UK-based Systemcare's requisitions.com epurchasing portal, the news that British ISP Freeserve and Barclays Bank are teaming to offer online services to small businesses, and the launch of an ASP offering based on a Unisys-equipped, mainframe-class data centre by ERP and ecommerce vendor XKO, which is headquartered in Berkhamstead. Europe's largest-ever ASP conference took place in London this week, attracting almost 400 paying delegates for a week-long programme, which included a one-day agenda designed by ASPnews.com. Among other speakers, Jonathan Lee, founder of pioneering Silicon Valley-based ASP Corio told delegates that the viability of the enterprise ASP model depends on vendors moving their applications to what he called "shared tenancy" software architectures within the next two years. In separate news, Corio this week announced it has added SAP to its vendor lineup (see internetnews.com story, Corio and SAP join forces - Mar 29th, 2000). The industry's first-ever awards ceremony formed part of the conference, including awards presented by ASPnews.com and the ASP Industry Consortium. ASPnews.com named Boston MA-based X-Collaboration "Most Innovative ASP" for its X-Community.com online collaboration application, which launched earlier this month (see related story, X-Community boosts teamwork - Mar 14th, 2000). Runner-up citations went to Network Associates' ASP unit myCIO.com for its automated self-provisioning system and to Corio for its work on enterprise application integration. Tasked with recognising the year's most outstanding contribution to the development of the ASP industry, the Consortium named its 25 founding members as the collective winners of the award. In other categories, delegates elected Manchester-based ESoft Global "ASP of the Year", while Citrix won the vote to choose the most innovative network-enabling technology. Huntingdon UK-based Aspective was voted "Most creative ASP service". ESoft also picked up the award for best display stand at the conference exhibition. IIR said they plan to repeat the conference, which was oversubscribed, in July with the same agenda content.
|
ANALYSIS
|
