February 2002

This, at any rate, is the logic behind the new version, which takes a much more modular approach than before to e-procurement. According to Chris Phillips, Commerce One's European marketing director, the new approach provides a lower cost of entry for users. "So there's less risk, because they can make the investment in manageable chunks." He admits this consideration "is very important in the current financial climate."

For the sourcing and buying components alone, prices could start at "under $100,000," he says, although the full package "would run to seven figures."

 

The new version also marks a move by Commerce One to extend e-procurement thinking much further into corporate culture, and to encourage users to automate more and more areas of their spending - which, in turn, it accepts will require increasing integration with other systems.

Hence the company's a decision to bundle more integration tools than before with the latest version. As Phillips admits frankly: "Integration costs often outweigh solution costs. We want to help ease that process."

The new Commerce One release also marks a further move by the company towards enterprise-focused procurement as opposed to open marketplaces. "We're taking the intellectual property we developed for public marketplaces, and using them for enterprises," Phillips says.

The two key modules in the new product cover sourcing and buying, and both include new features. On the buying side, for instance, there is new functionality to handle procurement of services as opposed to products. The ability to handle invoicing has also been improved.

Underpinning these modules is the Commerce One Collaborative Platform - a technology package which includes transaction, communication and Web services, and integrates with the Commerce One.net trading network and Global Trading Web, a worldwide supplier network. The company has come out as a strong supporter of emerging open standards such as xCBL (the XML-based Common Business Library) and ebXML.

Commerce One claims a 32 per cent share of the European e-procurement systems market, where Ariba is reckoned to be its chief rival. Overall, it says it has worked with 50 companies on online sourcing, transacting business worth $40 billion and typically saving users between 5 and 20 per cent of costs.

Early this year there were rumours that it had fallen out with ERP giant SAP, with which it has joint development and marketing agreements, but it moved quickly to scotch these reports, and the two companies have reaffirmed their commitment to joint projects. Chris Phillips says between a quarter and a half of Commerce One revenues in fact come from its relationship with SAP.

In the UK Commerce One also has a relationship with BT Ignite, and the two share several e-procurement customers.