CommerceXpert Solutions for ISP-Telco Services

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 CommerceXpert Solutions for ISP-Telco Services

COMMERCEXPERT SOLUTIONS FOR HOSTING

Built on Netscape SuiteSpot Hosting Edition servers, the CommerceXpert product family provides Internet commerce application solutions for conducting business-to-business and business-to-consumer commerce on the Internet. CommerceXpert includes high-performance and security-enhanced applications such as Internet publishing services, business-to-business electronic data interchange (EDI) over the Internet and non-Internet networks, customer profile management, and order and invoice forms processing. The modular architecture and scalability of the CommerceXpert product family enable service providers to offer value-added services that provide a healthy return on investment. In addition to sharing many of the key benefits of Netscape SuiteSpot Hosting Edition, such as high scalability, high availability, and an open architecture, CommerceXpert offers the following key features:

Personalization of content. CommerceXpert's Internet publishing services enable delivery of information content and services based on individual users' preferences. CommerceXpert provides a complete CORBA agent model for creating granular personalized content that can be coupled with agents for push delivery and presentation to subscribers.
Content delivery. CommerceXpert Internet publishing services enable delivery of personalized information through several formats such as email or a personalized web page. For example, a customer can create an agent that captures a user's interests and uses Netscape Netcaster to deliver a personalized content channel.
Content management. CommerceXpert's publishing services allow content providers to convert existing documents to HTML from multiple formats, import news feeds, create publications, load and index documents for rapid retrieval through browse trees or text-search capabilities, and send these publications from staging to their production site.
Structured business document management. CommerceXpert's messaging and application services include document storage facilities that allow for message data to be retrieved on demand by other applications or stored for scheduled processing. Tracking services ensure that documents are reconciled, acknowledgments generated, and notifications provided as a document goes through its complete life cycle for activities such as order processing and invoicing.
Customer management. Customers can define their users' registration and login procedures to capture information, organization level and document-level access control rules, which services are billable, and how personalized content is sent directly to users via email. Sophisticated activity tracking and reporting tools provide detailed usage profiles for tailoring offerings to users.
Central and distributed administration. CommerceXpert's publishing services include multiple administration levels, allowing customers to define the tasks delegated to their users. Customers can centrally manage administrative functions such as setting up users, billing for services, setting access control rights, and defining products and pricing. Each content provider can administer its products and resources, login and registration procedures, and review its publications before submitting them to production.

ECXPERT 1.0
ECXpert is an Internet-centric messaging and application integration software product that allows companies to conduct electronic commerce over the Internet or private networks. Small- and medium-sized businesses value ECXpert for handling traditional EDI as well as more complex integration needs. This product provides robust tracking and auditing capabilities to monitor units of work as they move through their complete life cycle. Using its multithreaded process design and scalable architecture, ECXpert provides security-enhanced, reliable communications via FTP, SMTP, or HTTP.

ECXpert offers several potential solutions for service providers to offer their customers. Service providers can host electronic post offices or forms on behalf of smaller businesses. As the trading partners of larger enterprises, these businesses value mailbox services, including the storage and retrieval of transaction data and the automation of order and invoice forms processing, for handling business documents. ECXpert enables business trading partners to communicate directly over the Internet without costly third-party intermediaries such as an EDI value-added network (VAN). Service providers can sell ECXpert and provide additional revenue-generating services around the installation, implementation, customer service, and training programs for this product. Service providers can also use ECXpert's ability to handle interapplication communications as the foundation for selling higher-value applications such as Netscape PublishingXpert 2.0 along with installation and implementation services.

The following list highlights ECXpert's features and the benefits that service providers can harness to create value-added customer services:

Feature	Description	Benefit to Service Provider
Document management storage facility	Allows message data to be retrieved from the ECXpert environment on demand by other applications or stored until a scheduled time for later processing.	Premium service: Providers can cost-effectively package and manage high volumes of small trading partners' business documents and can provide value-added tracking, auditing, reporting, and archiving services.
Object-oriented data mapping and translation	Translates data to and from EDI standards and maps any data format to another, such as ANSI ASC X12, EDIFACT, and UCS.	Premium service: New services can provide flexible handling of all trading-partner customer data formats, such as EDI, non-EDI, objects, binary files, documents, and HTML forms. It is also a gateway to existing EDI and VAN investments that may be based on proprietary protocols.
Scheduler	Administration interface to define timing of user access to data at both the trading relationship and systemwide levels. Includes purge and archive capabilities.	Premium service: Tailor data access for processing according to each customer's sending and receiving requirements.
Security	Use of open standard encryption methods for secure transmission and authentication, such as S/MIME, Message Disposition Notification (MDN), SSL, X.509 certificates, and encrypted passwords.	Differentiation: Service providers can assure customers of the integrity of their business documents and that senders are properly authenticated. MDN creates a nonrepudiatable audit trail for returning signed receipts.
Services manager	Controls the processes or services performed for each unit of work. Initiates the sequence of requisite services after authenticating the sender, the receiver, and the file type of the submitted object.	Premium service: Providers can define and charge for new services such as managing customer's purchase orders and acknowledgments.
Membership	Manage system users and trading partners to define privileges and access to system components.	Cost savings: Easy, secure management of privileges for each customer.
Web form tools	Browser access for remote trading partners and logic to process the entry and receipt of web form data.	Differentiation: Support for multiple forms-processing scenarios as value-added services.

PUBLISHINGXPERT 2.0
PublishingXpert 2.0 is a comprehensive Internet and extranet commerce solution designed to allow customers to sell, manage, and deliver content and services to customers and partners. PublishingXpert is built on Netscape ONE-enabling technologies and provides an integrated set of components to address the entire spectrum of services required in implementing a content-based commerce site. Base components include information retrieval, membership, content access control, billing and subscription management, secure payment, and content management. The components are part of a robust multi-tiered CORBA-based distributed application architecture that provides complete transaction- and session-management capabilities along with the scalability to support the largest online services.

Service providers can utilize the robust, component-based model PublishingXpert provides to create customized solutions. Service providers could target small- to medium-sized companies that are looking to create content-based services. Service providers could use the single- or multihosting features of PublishingXpert. The multihosting features allow service providers to host multiple content providers with a base installation of PublishingXpert. Each content provider service is unique and completely separated from the other content providers except for shared CPU and network bandwidth. This allows the content provider to offer unique services and unique branding of content and products. The service provider maintains a central transaction server for membership, billing, and payment services. The service provider would be responsible for distribution and tracking all content provider-generated revenues.

The following list highlights PublishingXpert's features and the benefits that service providers can harness to create hosted services for content providers.

Feature	Description	Benefit to Service Provider
Template-driven interface	PublishingXpert user interface is HTML-template driven. The actual user services are implemented as server-side JavaScript objects.	Cost savings: Provides dynamic content display and ease of customization and limits browser incompatibility.
System monitoring tool	A bundled Java-based system monitoring tool. Allows monitoring of all CORBA servers.	Cost savings: Lowers administration costs for large-scale implementations.
Personalized content delivery	A complete CORBA-based agent server, AgentXpert, comes bundled. Includes multiple agents to capture customer profiles, perform personalized searches, and deliver content to customers.	Premium service: Service providers can offer large-scale personalized content with AgentXpert. New agents can be created to determine cross-marketing opportunities between hosted sites.
Activity tracking	Tracks site usage patterns and captures user demographics. Several reports are bundled to analyze the log information. Can do content usage analysis by site or by user.	Differentiation, premium service: Service providers can utilize activity tracking in conjunction with AgentXpert to provide targeted advertising and perform cross-marketing activities.
Content management server	Has capabilities such as version control, check-in, check-out, document recovery, staging, loading, indexing, and document conversion. Server comes bundled with search interface.	Premium service: Each hosted content provider can manage and stage content before submitting it to the service provider as an automated or manual process.
Personal page and categorization system	Ability to create a personal home page for every user. Categorization system organizes content or services so it can be put into a personal page.	Differentiation: Service providers can use this feature to further personalize their product offerings.
Advanced text search and information retrieval	CORBA-based text search server with choice of two industry-leading commercial search engines. Supports advanced text search features. Ability to offer search services across multiple content providers' content. Fully integrated with PublishingXpert access control and billing.	Cost savings, premium service: Multiple search server support for scalability. Can create additional site services using the same set of base content.
Flexible subscription and billing services	Complete CORBA-based billing engine. Supports subscription accounts services of any duration and multiple billing models.	Differentiation: Track the transactions by content provider and produce revenue reconciliation reports.
Secure payment services	Integrated online credit-card processing. Bundled with the CORBA-based payment services server.	Cost savings: Service providers can maintain one central payment server that serves all hosted content providers.
Complete membership model	PublishingXpert utilizes the CommerceXpert common membership model, a shared membership with all CommerceXpert products. This allows for robust tracking of user demographics and profiles, access control, and managed billing subscription accounts. Supports individual and corporate users.	Cost savings: Service providers can have a central membership database for all CommerceXpert-hosted applications, including the SellerXpert and BuyerXpert products. Provides organizational authority capability so organizations can manage corporate subscription users.
Granular access control model	Controls access to content and services at multiple levels.	Differentiation, premium service: Service providers can implement different models of access control depending on the individual service requirements.
Reporting server	Comes bundled with a base set of object-oriented reporting tools and standard reports. In addition, a full reporting server offers scheduled report serving, access control for launching reporting services, and a web agent for report presentation.	Premium service, differentiation: Service providers can quickly and easily create new reports specific to content providers' needs.

SELLERXPERT 1.0
SellerXpert expands a corporation's sales and marketing channel to the Internet. Flexible and scalable, it provides a complete application infrastructure on which to build service offerings. SellerXpert provides a seamless ordering solution that can link to a supplier's legacy or enterprise system to give it a strong competitive and marketing advantage. Integrated product features include:

A comprehensive and integrated application that includes order management, membership, payment, order tracking, electronic product catalog, and full document messaging and application integration using ECXpert.
Object-based architecture designed to provide scalability in a premium business solution.
Business rules that give service provider customers the ability to customize their systems.
Flexible order processing and order tracking.

SellerXpert offers service providers a solution uniquely designed to meet the needs of corporate suppliers and distributors. SellerXpert has been designed to address the fundamental needs of all sales and marketing organizations: increase revenue, reduce costs, and increase customer satisfaction. SellerXpert addresses all three goals with a unique combination of technology and business processes, all built on an Internet architecture designed to handle mission-critical business. Service providers that offer products such as SellerXpert combined with ECXpert and upcoming BuyerXpert will be able to lead the way in offering Internet commerce solutions not just to individual companies but to whole trading-partner communities.

The following list highlights SellerXpert's features and the benefits that service providers can use to create value-added customer services:

Feature	Description	Benefit to Service Provider
Business rules	Ability to modify and change rules to tailor application functionality.	Differentiation: Sellers have different requirements based on industry, market, and locale. Business rules allow service providers to meet the unique needs of each seller and its trading partners.
Electronic product catalog	A full-featured multimedia product catalog that supports multiple search methodologies, including text, hierarchical, and the latest in parametrics	Premium service, differentiation: Easily customizable by the customer.
Customization	Able to change application functionality and appearance through JavaScript and HTML and Java-designed end-user templates.	Cost savings, differentiation: Provide a service built on a common architecture but allow each seller the ability to customize its site to reflect its own personality and branding.
Systemwide staging and loading services	A comprehensive Java application that allows easy loading of the catalog and back-end service components.	Differentiation: Allows service providers to offer a simple and fast solution for their customers to stage and load data.
Order management services	A sophisticated order management system designed to handle the most complex business-to-business rules.	Premium service: Allows service providers to offer sellers personalized service to each of their buyers. This includes pricing, payment terms, shipping, taxes, and pricing adjustments.
Reporting server	Comes bundled with a base set of object-oriented reporting tools and standard reports. In addition, a full reporting server offers scheduled report serving, access control for launching reporting services, and a web agent for report presentation.	Premium service, differentiation: Service providers can quickly and easily create new reports specific to content providers' needs.

For more information on how Netscape SuiteSpot Hosting Edition provides the tools service providers need to offer a range of services, go to the Netscape SuiteSpot Hosting Edition White Paper.