Commerce One to port to Sun systems
- Posted:
- 12:25 22 Jun 2001
Commerce One is scheduled to announce this week that it is extending its SAP AG partnership to include Sun Microsystems, which will offer its MarketSet business-to-business (B2B) marketplace environment for Sun's Solaris operating system.
In addition, SAP officials said earlier this month that Commerce One was free to negotiate a deal with PeopleSoft similar to its SAP agreement.
No plans are in place, but PeopleSoft is in talks with Commerce One and others for arrangements in which PeopleSoft would provide application services for marketplaces, said Kerry Lamson, PeopleSoft's vice president of e-business strategy and marketing.
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For the next phase of their partnership, Commerce One and SAP will port their joint MarketSet marketplace platform and Commerce One's Buyer product to Sun systems. The MarketSet platform is designed to handle direct procurement, supply-chain management, and real-time collaboration.
The relationship with Sun will be a boon to Commerce One because it will open up the vendor to Unix customers, said Lance Travis, an analyst at AMR Research. "Commerce One needs to do something if they want to remain an independent company," Travis said.
Travis added that an alliance between Commerce One and PeopleSoft would allow Commerce One to focus on PeopleSoft's customer base for human resources modules without threatening SAP.
Commerce One customer Bob Renner, chief technical officer at timber products exchange, ForestExpress, said his company chose the solution for the Solaris platform because participants needed assurances that their internal enterprise environments would handle the data and transactions of the exchange.
The news comes at a crucial time for Commerce One, as its shareholders will meet this week to consider a reorganisation to keep half of its stake in automotive B2B exchange Covisint LLC.
Covisint serves as a reminder of the importance of suppliers, analysts said. The demand for Covisint offerings has been sluggish, and it uses only 50 of Commerce One's 1,500 service employees despite earlier predictions that it would need thousands more, said Patrick Walravens, equity analyst at Lehman Brothers. As a result, demand for consultants has exceeded supply, resulting in too many service personnel.
"If [suppliers] were all hooking up to the Covisint marketplace, you would need a lot more than 50 working on it," Walravens said.
Exchanges such as Covisint "are only a small part of Commerce One's customer base, so the math used by Lehman doesn't accurately reflect our utilisation," said a Commerce One spokesman.
